JOSEPH PULITZER 



BY ALLEYNE IRELAND 

JOSEPH PULITZER 
THE FAR EASTERN TROPICS 
THE PROVINCE OF BURMA 
TROPICAL COLONIZATION 




THE SARGENT PORTRAIT OF JOSEPH PULITZER, 
PAINTED IN 1907 



JOSEPH PULITZER 



REMINISCENCES OF A 
SECRETARY 



BY 

ALLEYNE IRELAND 




NEW YORK 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 

MCMXIV 



Copyright igi4 by 
Mitchell Kennerley ^ 



APR 28 1914 



CI,A369883 



DEDICATED 

BY KIND PERMISSION 

AND 

WITH SINCERE REGARDS 

TO 

MRS. JOSEPH PULITZER 



PREFACE 

A FEW words of explanation are necessary 
in regard to these reminiscences of the late 
Joseph Pulitzer. 

The present volume is in no sense a biog- 
raphy of that extraordinary man. It is 
merely an accurate and somewhat detailed 
account of my experiences as a subordinate 
member of the personal staff which was al- 
ways in attendance upon him. 

Only one side of a singularly rich and com- 
plex nature is disclosed in these pages — ^the 
side which he turned to a new secretary. It 
is to be hoped that someone who knew him 
intimately and for a long time will supple- 
ment this record by a work which will do jus- 
tice to the varied and remarkable qualities of 
one of the most vigorous, picturesque, and 
original personaHties that ever played a part 
in the interesting drama of American public 
life. 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

I wish to express my sense of indebtedness 
to Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer, to Mr. Harold 
Stanley Pollard, and to Mr. Norman G. 
Thwaites for their permission to use the vari- 
ous pictures of Mr. Pulitzer reproduced in 
this book. 

Alleyne Ireland 

New York, March, 1914. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER J- ^^t ^ PAGE 

I. In a Casting ISTet 9 

II. Meeting Joseph Pulitzer 39 

III. Life at Cap Martin 71 

IV. Yachting in the Mediterranean 103 

V. Getting to Know Mr. Pulitzer 142 

VI. Wiesbaden and an Atlantic 

Voyage 176 

VII. Bar Harbor and the Last Cruise 211 

Illustrations 

The Sargent portrait of Joseph Pulit- 
zer, painted in 1907 Frontispiece i-^ 

Joseph Pulitzer at the age of thirty- ^p^^ 
four 42 ^' 

Joseph Pulitzer at Monte Carlo, 1911 94 t 

Joseph Pulitzer and one of his secre- 
taries on the deck of the "Liberty" 104 ^ 

Joseph Pulitzer listening to the morn- 
ing's news on the "Liberty" 124 

Joseph Pulitzer at the age of twenty- ,. 

three 172 '' 

Joseph Pulitzer in 1906, taken on the ^ 

train between London and Dover 178 

Joseph Pulitzer in 1902, riding in Cen- 
tral Park with a secretary 218 ^ 



CHAPTER I 

In a Casting Net 

ALONG illness, a longer convalescence, 
a positive injunction from my doc- 
tor to leave friends and business asso- 
ciates and to seek some spot where a com- 
fortable bed and good food could be had 
in convenient proximity to varied but mild 
forms of amusement — and I found myself 
in the autumn of the year 1910 free and 
alone in the delightful city of Hamburg. 

All my plans had gone down wind, and 
as I sat at my table in the Cafe Ziechen, 
whence, against the background of the glit- 
tering blue of the Alster, I could see the 
busy life of the Alter Jungfernstieg and 
the Alsterdamm, my thoughts turned nat- 
urally to the future. 

9 



10 JOSEPH PULITZER 

It is not the easiest thing in the world to 
reconstruct at forty years of age the whole 
scheme of your life; but my illness, and 
other happenings of a highly disagreeable 
character, had compelled me to abandon a 
career to which I had devoted twenty years 
of arduous labor; and the question which 
pressed for an immediate answer was : What 
are you going to do now? 

Various alternatives presented themselves. 
There had been a suggestion that I should 
take the editorship of a newspaper in Cal- 
cutta; an important financial house in Lon- 
don had offered me the direction of its in- 
terests in Western Canada; a post in the 
service of the Government of India had 
been mentioned as a possibility by certain 
persons in authority. 

My own inclination, the child of a weary 
spirit and of the lassitude of ill health, 
swayed me in the direction of a quiet re- 
treat in Barbados, that peaceful island of 
an eternal summer cooled by the northeast 
trades, where the rush and turmoil of mod- 
ern life are unknown and where a very 



JOSEPH PULITZER 11 

modest income more than suffices for all the 
needs of a simple existence. 

I shall never know to what issue my reflec- 
tions upon these matters would have led me, 
for a circumstance, in the last degree trivial, 
intervened to turn my thoughts into an en- 
tirely new channel, and to guide me, though 
I could not know it at the time, into the 
service of Joseph Pulitzer. 

My waiter was extremely busy serving a 
large party of artillery officers at an adjoin- 
ing table. I glanced through The Times 
and the Hamburger Nachrichten, looked out 
for a while upon the crowded street, and 
then, resigning myself to the delay in get- 
ting my lunch, picked up The Times again 
and did what I had never done before in my 
yfe — read the advertisements under the head 
"Professional Situations." 

All except one were of the usual type, the 
kind in which a prospective employer flat- 
ters a prospective employee by classing as 
"professional" the services of a typewriter 
or of a companion to an elderly gentleman 



12 JOSEPH PULITZER 

who resides within easy distance of an im- 
portant provincial town. 

One advertisement, however, stood out 
from the rest on account of the peculiar re- 
quirements set forth in its terse appeal. It 
ran something after this fashion: "Wanted, 
an intelligent man of about middle age, 
widely read, widely traveled, a good sailor, 
as companion-secretary to a gentleman. 
Must be prepared to live abroad. Good sal- 
ary. Apply, etc." 

My curiosity was aroused; and at first 
sight I appeared to meet the requirements in 
a reasonable measure. I had certainly trav- 
eled widely, and I was an excellent sailor — 
excellent to the point of off ensiveness. 
Upon an unfavorable construction I could 
claim to be middle-aged at forty ; and I was 
prepared to live abroad in the unlikely event 
of any one fixing upon a country which 
could be properly called "abroad" from the 
standpoint of a man who had not spent 
twelve consecutive months in any place since 
he was fifteen years old. 

As for intelligence, I reflected that for 



JOSEPH PULITZER 13 

niiiety-nine people out of a hundred intelli- 
gence in others means no more than the dis- 
covery of a person who is in intellectual ac- 
quiescence with themselves, and that if the 
necessity arose I could probably affect an 
acquiescence which would serve all the pur- 
poses of a fundamental identity of convic- 
tions. 

Two things, however, suggested possible 
difficulties, the questions of what interpreta- 
tions the advertiser placed upon the terms 
"widely read" and "good salary." I could 
not claim to be widely read in any conven- 
tional sense, for I was not a university grad- 
uate, and the very extensive reading I had 
done in my special line of study — the control 
and development of tropical dependencies^ — 
though it might entitle me to some considera- 
tion as a student in that field had left me 
woefully ignorant of general literature. 
Would the ability to discuss with intelligence 
the Bengal Regulation of 1818, or the Brit- 
ish Guiana Inmiigration Ordinance of 1891 
be welcomed as a set-off to a complete un- 
famiharity with Milton's "Comus" and 



14 JOSEPH PULITZER 

Gladstone's essay on the epithets of motion 
in Homer? 

On the subject of what constituted a 
"good salary" experience had taught me 
to expect a very wide divergence of view, 
not only along the natural line of cleavage 
between the person paying and the person 
receiving the salary, but also between one 
employer and another and between one em- 
ployee and another; and I recalled a story, 
told me in my infancy, in which a certain 
British laboring man had been heard to re- 
mark that he would not be the Czar of Rus- 
sia, no, not for thirty shillings a week. But 
that element in the situation might, I re- 
flected, very well be left to take care of it- 
self. 

I finished my lunch, and then replied to 
the advertisement, giving my Enghsh ad- 
dress. My letter, a composition bred of the 
conflicting influences of pride, modesty, 
prudence, and curiosity, brought forth in due 
course a brief reply in which I was bidden 
to an interview in that part of London 



JOSEPH PULITZER 15 

where fashion and business prosperity seek 
to ape each other. 

Upon presenting myself at the appointed 
hour I was confronted by a gentleman 
whose severity of manner I learned later to 
recognize as the useful mask to a singularly 
genial and kindly nature. 

Our interview was long and, to me at 
any rate, rather embarrassing, since it re- 
solved itself into a searching cross-exami- 
nation by a past-master in the art. Who 
were my parents? When and v^^here had 
I been born? Where had I been educated? 
What were my means of livelihood? What 
positions had I filled since I went out into 
the world? What countries had I visited? 
What books had I read? What books had 
I written? To what magazines and re- 
views had I contributed? Who were my 
friends? Was I fond of music, of paint- 
ing, of the drama? Had I a sense of 
humor? Had I a good temper or a good 
control of a bad one? What languages 
could I speak or read? Did I enjoy good 
health? Was I of a nervous disposition? 



16 JOSEPH PULITZER 

Had I tact and discretion? Was I a good 
horseman, a good sailor, a good talker, a 
good reader? 

When it came to asking me whether I 
was a good horseman and a good sailor, I 
realized that anyone who expected to find 
these two qualities combined in one man 
was quite capable of demanding that his 
companion-secretary should be able to knit 
woollen socks, write devotional verse, and 
compute the phases of the moon. 

I remember chuckling to myself over this 
quaint conceit; I was to learn later that it 
came unpleasantly near the truth. 

Under this close examination I felt that 
I had made rather a poor showing. This 
was due in some measure, no doubt, to the 
fact that my questioner abruptly left any 
topic as soon as he discovered that I knew 
something about it, and began to angle 
around, with disturbing success, to find the 
things I did not know about. 

At one point, however, I scored a hit. 
After I had been put through my paces, a 
process which seemed to me to end only at 



JOSEPH PULITZER 17 

the exact point where my questioner could 
no longer remember the name of anything 
in the universe about which he could frame 
an interrogation, it was my turn to ask 
questions. 

Was the person I was addressing the gen- 
tleman who needed the companion? 

No, he was merely his agent. As a mat- 
ter of fact the person on whose behalf he 
was acting was an American. 

I nodded in a non-committal way. 

He was also a millionaire. 

I bowed the kind of bow that a French- 
man makes when he says Mais parfaite- 
merit. 

Furthermore he was totally blind. 

"Joseph Pulitzer," I said. 

"How in the world did you guess that?" 
asked my companion. 

"That wasn't a guess," I replied. "You 
advertised for an intelligent man; and this 
is simply where my intelligence commences 
to show itself. An intelligent man couldn't 
live as long as I have in the United States 
without hearing a good deal about Joseph 



18 ' JOSEPH PULITZER 

Pulitzer; and, after all, the country isn't 
absolutely overrun with blind millionaires." 

At the close of the interview I was told 
that I would be reported upon. In the 
meantime would I kindly send in a written 
account of the interview, in the fullest pos- 
sible detail, as a test of my memory, sense 
of accuracy, and literary style. 

Nor was this all. As I prepared to take 
my departure I was handed the address of 
another gentleman who would also examine 
me and make a report. Before I got out 
of the room my inquisitor said, *'It may in- 
terest ^ou to know that we have had more 
than six hundred applications for the post, 
and that it may, therefore, take some time 
before the matter is definitely settled." 

I was appalled. Evidently I had been 
wasting my time, for I could have no doubt 
that the gallant six hundred would include 
a sample of every kind of pundit, stationary 
or vagrant, encompassed within the seven 
seas ; and against such competition I felt my 
chances to be just precisely nothing. 

My companion observed my discomfiture. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 19 

and as he shook hands he said, "Oh, that 
doesn't really mean very much. As a matter 
of fact we were able to throw out more than 
five hundred and fifty applications merely 
for self-evident reasons. A number of 
school teachers and bank clerks applied, and 
in general these gentlemen said that al- 
though they had not traveled they would 
have no objection to living abroad, and that 
they might venture to hope that if they did 
go to sea they would prove to be good sail- 
ors. 

"Most of them appeared to think that the 
circumstance of being middle-aged would 
off-set their deficiencies in other directions. 
There are really only a few gentlemen whom 
we can consider as being likely to meet Mr. 
Pulitzer's requirements, and the selection 
will be made finally by Mr. Puhtzer him- 
self. It is very probable that you will be 
asked to go to Mentone to spend a fort- 
night or so on Mr. Pulitzer's yacht or at 
his villa at Cap Martin, as he never engages 
anybody until he has had the candidate with 
him for a short visit. 



20 JOSEPH PULITZER 

"And, by the way, would you mind writ- 
ing a short narrative of your life, not more 
than two thousand words? It would inter- 
est Mr. Pulitzer and would help him to reach 
a decision in your case. You might also 
send me copies of some of your writings." 

Thus ended my interview with Mr. James 
M. Tuohy, the London correspondent of the 
New York World. 

My next step was to call upon the second 
inquisitor, Mr. George Ledlie. I found him 
comfortably installed at an hotel in the West 
End. He was an American, very courteous 
and pleasant, but evidently prepared to use 
a probe without any consideration for the 
feelings of the victim. 

As my business was to reveal myself, I 
wasted no time, and for about an hour I 
rambled along on the subject of my Ameri- 
can experiences. I do not know to this day 
what sort of an impression I created upon 
this gentleman, but I felt at the time that 
it ought to have been a favorable one. 

We had many friends in common; I had 
recently been offered a lectureship in the uni- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 21 

versity from which he had graduated; some 
of my books had been published in Amer- 
ica by firms in whose standing he had con- 
fidence; I paraded a sUght acquaintance 
with three Presidents of the United States, 
and produced from my pocketbook letters 
from two of them; we found that we were 
both respectful admirers of a charming lady 
who had recently undergone a surgical oper- 
ation; he had been a guest at my club in 
Boston, I had been a guest at his club in 
New York. When I left him I thought 
poorly of the chances of the remnant of the 
six hundred. 

Some weeks passed and I heard nothing 
more of the matter. During this time I had 
leisure to think over what I had heard from 
time to time about Joseph Pulitzer, and to 
speculate, with the aid of some imaginative 
friends, upon the probable advantages and 
disadvantages of the position for which I 
was a candidate. 

Gathered together, my second-hand im- 
pressions of Joseph Pulitzer made httle 
more than a hazy outline. I had heard or 



22 JOSEPH PULITZER 

read that he had landed in New York in the 
early sixties, a penniless youth unable to 
speak a word of English; that after a re- 
markable series of adventures he had be- 
come a newspaper proprietor and, later, a 
millionaire; that he had been stricken blind 
at the height of his career; that his friends 
and his enemies agreed in describing him as 
a man of extraordinary ability and of re- 
markable character; that he had been vic- 
torious in a bitter controversy with Presi- 
dent Roosevelt; that one of the Rothschilds 
had remarked that if Joseph Pulitzer had 
not lost his eyesight and his health he, Pulit- 
zer, would have collected into his hands all 
the money there was; that he was the sub- 
ject of one of the noblest portraits created 
by the genius of John Sargent; and that 
he spent most of his time on board a mag- 
nificent yacht, surrounded by a staff of six 
secretaries. 

This was enough, of course, to inspire me 
with a keen desire to meet Mr. Pulitzer; it 
was not enough to afford me the slightest 



JOSEPH PULITZER 23 

idea of what life would be like in close per- 
sonal contact with such a man. 

The general opinion of my friends was 
that hfe with Mr. Pulitzer would be one 
long succession of happy, care-free days 
spent along the languorous shores of the 
Mediterranean — days of which perhaps two 
hours would be devoted to light conversa- 
tion with my interesting host, and the re- 
mainder of my waking moments to the gai- 
ties of Monte Carlo, to rambles on the pic- 
turesque hillsides of Rapallo and Bordi- 
ghera, or to the genial companionship of my 
fellow-secretaries under the snowy awnings 
of the yacht. 

We argued the matter out to our entire 
satisfaction. Mr. Puhtzer, in addition to 
being bhnd, was a chronic invalid, requiring 
a great deal of sleep and repose. He could 
hardly he expected to occupy more than 
twelve hours a day with his secretaries. That 
worked out at two hours apiece, or, if the 
division was made by days, about one day 
a week to each secretary. 

The yacht, I had been given to under- 



24. JOSEPH PULITZER 

stand, cruised for about eight months in the 
year over a course bounded by Algiers and 
the Pirseus, by Mentone and Alexandria, 
with visits to the ports of Italy, Sicily, Cor- 
sica, and Crete. The least imaginative of 
mortals could make a very fair and alluring 
picture of what Kfe would be like under 
such circumstances. As the event turned 
out it was certainly not our imaginations 
that were at fault. 

As time passed without bringing any 
further sign from Mr. Tuohy my hopes 
gradually died out, and I fixed in my mind 
a date upon which I would abandon all ex- 
pectations of securing the appointment. 
Scarcely had I reached this determination 
when I received a telegram from Mr. Tuohy 
asking me to lunch with him the next day 
at the Cafe Royal in order to meet Mr. 
Ralph Pulitzer, who was passing through 
London on his way back to America after 
a visit to his father. 

I leave my readers to imagine what sort 
of a lunch I had in the company of two 
gentlemen whose duty it was to siruggle 



JOSEPH PULITZER 25 

with the problem of discovering the real 
character and attainments of a guest who 
knew he was under inspection. 

I found Mr. Ralph Pulitzer to be a slen- 
der, clean-cut, pale gentleman of an ex- 
tremely quiet and self-possessed manner. 
He was very agreeable, and he listened to 
my torrent of words with an interest which, 
if it were real, reflected great credit on me, 
and which, if it were feigned, reflected not 
less credit on him. 

As we parted he said, "I shall write to 
my father to-day and tell him of our meet- 
ing. Of course, as you know, the decision 
in this matter rests entirely with him." 

After this incident there was another long 
silence, and I again fixed upon a day be- 
yond which I would not allow my hopes to 
flourish. The day arrived, nothing hap- 
pened, and the next morning I w^nt down 
to the offices of the West India Royal Mail 
Steam Packet Company and made inquiries 
about the boats for Barbados. I spent the 
afternoon at my club making out a list of 
things to be taken out as aids to comfort- 



26 JOSEPH PULITZER 

able housekeeping in a semi-tropical coun- 
try — a list wbxich swelled amazingly as I 
turned over the fascinating pages of the 
Army and Navy Stores Catalogue, 

By dinner time I had become more than 
reconciled to the new turn of affairs, and 
when I reached my flat at midnight I found 
myself impatient of the necessary delay be- 
fore I could settle down to a Hfe of easy 
literary activity in one of the most delight- 
ful climates in the world and in the neigh- 
borhood of a large circle of charming 
friends and acquaintances. 

On the table in the hall I found a tele- 
gram from Mr. Tuohy instructing me to 
start next morning for Mentone, where Mr. 
Pulitzer would entertain me as his guest for 
a fortnight, either at his villa or aboard his 
yacht Liberty, and informing me that I 
would find at my club early in the morning 
an envelope containing a ticket to Mentone, 
with sleeper and parlor-car accommodation, 
and a check to cover incidental expenses. 

The tickets and the check w^ere accom- 
panied by a letter in which I was told that 



JOSEPH PULITZER 27 

I was to consider this two weeks' visit as a 
trial, that during that time all my expenses 
would be paid, that I would receive an 
honorarium of so much a day from the time 
I left London until I was engaged by Mr. 
Puhtzer or had arrived back in London after 
rejection by him, and that ever5i:hing de- 
pended upon the impression I made on my 
host. 

I left London cold, damp, and foggy; 
and in less than twenty- four hours I was in 
the train between Marseilles and Mentone, 
watching the surf playing among the rocks 
in the brilhant sunshine of the Cote d'Azur. 
In the tiny harbor of Mentone I found, 
anchored stern-on to the quay, the steam 
yacht Liberty — a miracle of sno\^y decks 
and gleaming brass-work — ^tonnage 1,607, 
length over all 316 feet, beam 35.6 feet, crew 
60, all told. 

A message from Mr. Pulitzer awaited 
me. Would I dine at his villa at Cap Mar- 
tin? An automobile would call for me at 
seven o'clock. 

I spent the day m looking over the yacht 



28 JOSEPH PULITZER 

and in trying* to pick up some information 
as to the general lay of the land, by observ- 
ing every detail of my new surroundings. 

The yacht itself claimed my first atten- 
tion. Everything was new and fascinating 
to me, for although I had had my share of 
experiences in barques, and brigs, and full- 
rigged ships, in mail boats and tramp steam- 
ers, only once before had I had an opportu- 
nity to examine closely a large private yacht. 
Ten years before, I had spent some time 
cruising along the northern coast of Bor- 
neo in the yacht of His Highness Sir 
Charles Brooke, Baja of Sarawak; but with 
that single exception yachting was for me 
an unknown phase of sea life. 

The Liberty — or, as the secretarial staff, 
for reasons which will become apparent 
later, called her, the Liberty^ Ha! Ha! — 
was designed and built on the Clyde. I 
have never seen a vessel of more beautiful 
lines. Sailors would find, I think, but one 
fault in her appearance and one peculiarity. 
With a white-painted hull, her bridge and 
the whole of her upper structure, except the 



JOSEPH PULITZEK 29 

masts and funnel, were also white, giving to 
her general features a certain flatness which 
masked her fine proportions. Her bridge, 
instead of being well forward, was placed so 
far aft that it was only a few feet from the 
funnel. The object of this departure from 
custom was to prevent any walking over Mr. 
Pulitzer's head when he sat in his library, 
which was situated under the spot, where 
the bridge would have been in most vessels. 

The boat was specially designed to meet 
Mr. Pulitzer's peculiar requirements. She 
had a flush deck from the bows to the stern, 
broken only, for perhaps twenty feet, by a 
well between the forecastle head and the 
fore part of the bridge. 

Running aft from the bridge to within 
forty feet of the stern was an unbroken 
line of deck houses. Immediately under the 
bridge was Mr. Pulitzer's library, a hand- 
some room lined from floor to ceiling with 
books; abaft of that was the dining saloon, 
which could accommodate in comfort a 
dozen people; continuing aft there were, on 
the port side, the pantry, amidships the en- 



30 JOSEPH PULITZER 

closed space over the engine room, and on 
the starboard side a long passage leading to 
the drawing-room and writing-room used by 
the secretaries and by members of Mr. Pulit- 
zer's family when they were on the yacht. 

The roof and sides of this line of deck 
houses were extended a few feet beyond the 
aftermost room, so as to provide a sheltered 
nook where Mr. Pulitzer could sit when the 
wind was too strong for his comfort on the 
open deck. 

Between the sides of the deck houses and 
the sides of the ship there ran on each side 
a promenade about nine feet broad, un- 
broken by bolt or nut, stanchion or venti- 
lator, smooth as a billiard table and made 
of the finest quahty of seasoned teak. The 
promenade continued across the fore part of 
Mr. Pulitzer's library and across the after 
part of the line of deck houses, so that there 
was an oblong track round the greater part 
of the boat, a track covered overhead with 
double awnings and protected inboard by 
the sides of the deck houses, and outboard 



JOSEPH PULITZER 31 

by adjustable canvas screens, which could 
be let down or rolled up in a few minutes. 

About thirty feet from the stern a heavy 
double canvas screen ran 'thwartships from 
one side of the boat to the other, shutting 
off a small space of deck for the use of the 
crew. The main deck space was allotted as 
follows: under the forecastle head accom- 
modation for two officers and two petty offi- 
cers, abaft of that the well space, of which 
I have spoken; under the library was Mr. 
Pulitzer's bedroom, occupying the whole 
breadth of the ship and extending from the 
bulkhead at the after part of the well space 
as far aft as the companion way leading 
down between the library and the saloon, 
say twenty-five feet. 

A considerable proportion of the sides of 
this bedroom was given up to books ; in one 
corner was a very high wash-hand-stand, 
so high that Mr. Pulitzer, who was well over 
six feet tall, could wash his hands without 
stooping. The provision of this very high 
wash-hand-stand illustrates the minute care 
with which everything had been foreseen in 



32 JOSEPH PULITZER 

the construction and fitting-up of the yacht. 
When a person stoops there is a shght im- 
pediment to the free flow of blood to the 
head, such an impediment might react un- 
favorably on the condition of Mr. Pulitzer's 
eyes, therefore the wash-hand-stand was high 
enough to be used without stooping. 

In the forward bulkhead of the cabin were 
two silent fans, one drawing air into the 
room, the other drawing it out. The most 
striking feature of the room was an im- 
mense four-poster bed which stood in the 
center of the cabin, with a couch at the foot 
and one or two chairs at one side. Hang- 
ing at the head of the bed was a set of elec- 
tric push-bells, the cords being of different 
lengths so that Mr. Puhtzer could call at 
will for the major-domo, the chief steward, 
the captain, the officer on watch, and so on. 

The bedroom was heavily carpeted and 
v/as cut off from the rest of the ship by 
double bulkheads, double doors, and double 
portholes, with the object of protecting Mr. 
Pulitzer as much as possible from all noise, 
to which he was excessively sensitive. A 



JOSEPH PULITZER SB 

large bathroom opened immediately off the 
bedroom, and a flight of steps led down to 
a gymnasium on the lower deck. 

Abaft of Mr. Pulitzer's bedroom there 
were, on the port side, the cabins of the 
major-domo, the captain, the head butler, 
the chief engineer, an officers' mess room, 
the ship's galley, a steward's mess room, and 
the cabins of the chief steward and one or 
two officers. 

Corresponding with these there were, on 
the starboard side, the cabins of the secretar- 
ies and the doctor, "The Cells," as we called 
them. They were comfortable rooms, all 
very much on one pattern, except that of the 
business secretary, which was a good deal 
larger than the others. He needed the ad- 
ditional space for newspaper files, docu- 
ments, correspondence, and so on. Each 
cabin contained a bed, a wash-hand-stand, 
a chest of drawers, a cupboard for clothes, 
a small folding table, some book shelves, an 
arm chair, an ordinary chair, an electric fan, 
and a radiator. Each cabin had two port- 



84 JOSEPH PULITZER 

holes, and there were two bathrooms to the 
six cabins. 

The center of the ship, between these 
cabins and the corresponding space on the 
port side, was occupied by the engine room ; 
and the entrance to the secretaries' quarters 
was through a companionway opening on to 
the promenade deck, with a door on each 
side of the yacht, and leading down a flight 
of stairs to a long fore-and-aft passage, 
out of which all the secretaries' cabins 
opened. 

Abaft the secretaries' cabins, and occupy* 
ing the whole breadth of the boat, were a 
number of cabins and suites for the accom- 
modation of Mrs. Pulitzer, other members 
of the family, and guests; and abaft of 
these, cut off by a 'thwartships bulkhead, 
were the quarters of the crew. 

The lower deck was given over chiefly to 
stores, coal bunkers, the engine room, the 
stoke-hold, and to a large number of elec- 
tric accumulators, which kept the electric 
lights going when the engines were not 
working. There were, however, on this deck 



JOSEPH PULITZER 35 

the gymnasium, and a large room, directly 
under Mr. Pulitzer's bedroom, used to take 
the overflow from the library. 

The engines were designed rather for 
smooth running than for speed, and twelve 
knots an hour was the utmost that could 
be got out of them, the average running 
speed being about eight knots. The yacht 
had an ample supply of boats, including 
two steam launches, one burning coal, the 
other oil. 

During my inspection of the yacht I was 
accompanied by my cabin-steward, a young 
Englishman who had at one time served 
aboard the German Emperor's yacht. 
Meteor. Nothing could have been more 
courteous than his manner or more intelli- 
gent than his explanations ; but the moment 
I tried to draw him out on the subject of 
life on the yacht he relapsed into a vague- 
ness from which I could extract no gleam of 
enlightenment. After fencing for some time 
with my queries he suggested that I might 
like to have a glass of sherry and a biscuit in 



36 JOSEPH PULITZER 

the secretaries' library, and, piloting me 
thither, he left me. 

The smoking-room was furnished with 
writing tables, some luxurious arm chairs, 
and a comfortable lounge, and every spare 
nook was filled with book shelves. The con- 
tents of these shelves were extremely varied. 
A cursory glance showed me Meyer's Neues 
KonversationS'Lieocicon, The Yacht Regis- 
ter, Whitaker's Almanack, Who's Who, 
Burke's Peerage, The Almanach de Gotha, 
the British and the Continental Bradsham, 
a number of Baedeker's "Guides," fifty or 
sixty volumes of the Tauchnitz edition, a 
large collection of files of reviews and maga- 
zines — The Nineteenth Century, Quarterly, 
Edinburgh, Fortnightly, Contemporary ^ 
National, Atlantic, North American, Revue 
de Deuce Mondes — and a scattering of vol- 
umes by Kipling, Shaw, Rosebery, Pater, 
Ida Tarbell, Bryce, Ferrero, Macaulay, An- 
atole France, Maupassant, *'Dooley," and a 
large number of French and German plays. 
I was struck by the entire absence of books 
of travel and scientific works. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 37 

I spent part of the afternoon in the draw- 
ing-room playing a large instrument of the 
gramophone type. There were several hun- 
dred records — from grand opera, violin 
solos by Kreisler, and the Gilbert and Sulli- 
van operas, to rag-time and the latest comic 
songs. 

Before the time came to dress for dinner 
I had met the captain and some of the offi- 
cers of the yacht. They were all very civil; 
and my own experience as a sailor enabled 
me to see that they were highly efficient men. 
I was a good deal puzzled, however, by 
something peculiar but very elusive in their 
attitude toward me, something which I had 
at once detected in the manner of my cabin- 
steward. 

With their courtesy was mingled a cer- 
tain flavor of curiosity tinged with amuse- 
ment, which, so far from being offensive, 
was distinctly friendly, but which, neverthe- 
less, gave me a vague sense of uneasiness. 
In fact the whole atmosphere of the yacht 
was one of restlessness and suspense; and 
the effect was heightened because each per- 



38 JOSEPH PULITZER 

son who spoke to me appeared to be on the 
point of divulging some secret or dehver- 
ing some advice, which discretion checked at 
his hps. 

I felt myself very much under observa- 
tion, a feeling as though I was a new boy 
in a boarding school or a new animal at the 
zoo — interesting to my companions not only 
on account of my novelty, but because my 
personal peculiarities would affect the com- 
fort of the community of which I was to 
become a member. 

At seven o'clock my cabin-steward an- 
nounced the arrival of the automobile, and 
after a swift run along the plage and up 
the winding roads on the hillsides of Cap 
Martin I found myself at the door of Mr. 
Pulitzer's villa. I was received by the 
major-domo, ushered into the drawing- 
room, and informed that Mr. Pulitzer would 
be down in a few minutes. 



CHAPTER II 

Meeting Joseph Pulitzee 

BEFORE I had time to examine my sur- 
romidings Mr. Pulitzer entered the 
room on the arm of the major-domo. My 
first swift impression was of a very tall 
man with broad shoulders, the rest of the 
body tapering away to thinness, with a noble 
head, bushy reddish beard streaked with 
gray, black hair, swept back from the fore- 
head and lightly touched here and there with 
silvery white. One eye was dull and half 
closed, ,the other was of a deep, brilliant 
blue which, so far from suggesting bhnd- 
ness, created the instant effect of a search- 
ing, eagle-like glance. The outstretched 
hand was large, strong, nervous, full of 
character, ending in well-shaped and im- 
maculately kept nails. 

39 



40 JOSEPH PULITZER 

A high-pitched voice, clear, penetrating, 
and vibrant, gave out the strange challenge : 
"Well, here you see before you the miser- 
able wreck who is to be your host ; you must 
make the best you can of him. Give me 
your arm into dinner." 

I may complete here a description of Mr. 
Pulitzer's appearance, founded upon months 
of close personal association with him. The 
head was splendidly modeled, the forehead 
high, the brows prominent and arched; the 
ears were large, the nose was long and 
hooked; the mouth, almost concealed by the 
mustache, was firm and thin-lipped; the 
jaws showed square and powerful under the 
beard ; the length of the face was much em- 
phasized by the flowing beard and by the 
way in which the hair was brushed back 
from the forehead. The skin was of a clear, 
healthy pink, like a young girl's ; but in mo- 
ments of intense excitement the color would 
deepen to a dark, ruddy flush, and after a 
succession of sleepless nights, or under the 
strain of continued worry, it would turn a 
dull, lifeless gray. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 41 

I have never seen a face which varied so 
much in expression. Not only was there a 
marked difference at all times between one 
side and the other, due partly to the con- 
trast between the two eyes and partly to a 
loss of flexibility in the muscles of the right 
side, but almost from moment to moment 
the general appearance of the face moved 
between a lively, genial animation, a cruel 
and wolf -like scowl, and a heavy and hope- 
less dejection. No face was capable of 
showing greater tenderness; none could as- 
sume a more forbidding expression of anger 
and contempt. 

The Sargent portrait, which forms the 
frontispiece of this volume, is a remarkable 
revelation of the complex nature of its sub- 
ject. It discloses the deep affection, the 
keen intelligence, the wide sympathy, the 
tireless energy, the delicate sensitiveness, the 
tearing impatience, the cold tyranny, and 
the flaming scorn by which his character was 
so erratically dominated. It is a noble and 
pathetic monument to the suffering which 
had been imposed for a quarter of a century 



42 JOSEPH PULITZER 

upon the intense and arbitrary spirit of this 
extraordinary man. 

The account which I am to give of Mr. 
Pulitzer's daily Uf e during the months im- 
mediately preceding his death would be un- 
intelligible to all but the very few who knew 
him in recent years if it were not prefaced 
by a brief biographical note. 

Joseph Pulitzer was born in the village 
of Mako, near Buda Pesth in Hungary, on 
April 10, 1847. His father was a Jew, his 
mother a Christian. At the age of sixteen 
he emigrated to the United States. He 
landed without friends, without money, un- 
able to speak a word of English. He en- 
listed immediately in the First New York 
(Lincoln) Cavalry Regiment, a regiment 
chiefly composed of Germans and in which 
German was the prevailing tongue. 

Within a year the Civil War ended, and 
Pulitzer found himself, in common with hun- 
dreds of thousands of others, out of employ- 
ment at a time when employment was most 
difficult to secure. At this time he was so 
poor that he was turned away from French's 



JOSEPH PULITZER 
AT THE AGE OF THIRTY^FOUR 



JOSEPH PULITZER 43 

Hotel for lack of fifty cents with which to 
pay for his bed. In less than twenty years 
he bought French's Hotel, pulled it down, 
and erected in its place the Pulitzer Build- 
ing, at that time one of the largest business 
buildings in New York, where he housed 
The World, 

What lay between these two events may 
be sunmied up in a few words. At the close 
of the Civil War Mr. Pulitzer went to St. 
Louis, and in 1868, after being engaged in 
various occupations, he became a reporter 
on the Westliche Post, In less than ten 
years he was editor and part proprietor. 
His amazing energy, his passionate interest 
in politics, his rare gift of terse and forcible 
expression, and his striking personaKty car- 
ried him over or through all obstacles. 

After he had purchased the St. Louis 
Dispatch^ amalgamated it with the Post, and 
made the Post-Dispatch a profitable busi- 
ness enterprise and a power to be reckoned 
with in politics, he felt the need of a wider 
field in which to maneuver the forces of his 
character and his intellect. 



44 JOSEPH PULITZER 

He came to New York in 1883 and pur- 
chased The World from Jay Gould. At 
that time The World had a circulation of 
less than twelve thousand copies a day, and 
was practically bankrupt. From this time 
forward Mr. Pulitzer concentrated his every 
faculty on building up The World, He 
was scoffed at, ridiculed, and abused by the 
most powerful editors of the old school. 
They were to learn, not without bitterness 
and wounds, that opposition was the one 
fuel of all others which best fed the triple 
flame of his courage, his tenacity, and his 
resourcefulness. 

Four years of unremitting toil produced 
two results. The World reached a circula- 
tion of two hundred thousand copies a day 
and took its place in the front rank of the 
American press as a journal of force and 
ability, and Joseph Pulitzer left New York, 
a complete nervous wreck, to face in soli- 
tude the knowledge that he would never read 
print again and that within a few years he 
would be totally blind. 

Joseph Pulitzer, as I knew him twenty- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 45 

four years after he had been driven from 
active hfe by the sudden and final collapse 
of his health, was a man who could be judged 
by no common standards, for his feelings, 
his temper, and his point of view had been 
warped by years of suffering. 

Had his spirit been broken by his trials, 
had his intellectual power weakened under 
the load of his affliction, had his burning in- 
terest in affairs cooled to a point where he 
could have been content to turn his back 
upon life's conflict, he might have found 
some happiness, or at least some measure of 
repose akin to that with which age consoles 
us for the loss of youth. But his greatest 
misfortune was that all the active forces of 
his personaHty survived to the last in their 
full vigor, inflicting upon him the curse of 
an impatience which nothing could appease, 
of a discontent which knew no amelioration. 

My first meeting with Mr. Pulitzer is in- 
delibly fixed in my memory. As we entered 
the dining-room the butler motioned to me 
to take a seat on Mr. Pulitzer's right hand, 
and as I did so I glanced up and down the 



46 JOSEPH PULITZER 

table to find myself in the presence of half- 
a-dozen gentlemen in evening dress, who 
bowed in a very friendly manner as Mr. 
Pulitzer said, with a broad sweep of his 
hand, "Gentlemen, this is Mr. AUeyne Ire- 
land; you will be able to inform him later 
of my fads and crotchets ; well, don't be un- 
generous with me, don't paint the devil as 
black as he is." 

This was spoken in a tone of banter, and 
was cut short by a curious, prolonged 
chuckle, which differed from laughter in the 
feeling it produced in the hearer that the 
mirth did not spring from the open, obvious 
humor of the situation, but from some 
whimsical thought which was the more rel- 
ished because its nature was concealed from 
us. I felt that, instead of my host's amuse- 
ment having been produced by his peculiar 
introduction, he had made his eccentric ad- 
dress merely as an excuse to chuckle over 
some notion which had formed itself in his 
mind from material entirely foreign to his 
immediate surroundings. 

I mention this because I found later that 



JOSEPH PULITZER 47 

one of Mr. Pulitzer's most embarrassing 
peculiarities was the sudden revelation from 
time to time of a mental state entirely at 
odds with the occupation of the moment. 
In the middle of an account of a play, when 
I was doing" my best to reproduce some 
scene from memory, wdth appropriate 
changes of voice to represent the different 
characters, Mr. Pulitzer would suddenly 
break in, "Did we ever get a reply to that 
letter about Laurier's speech on reciprocity? 
No? Well, all right, go on, go on." 

Or it might be when I was reading from 
the daily papers an account of a murder or 
a railroad TVTCck that Mr. Pulitzer would 
break out into a peal of his pecuhar chuck- 
Hng laughter. I would immediately stop 
reading, when he would pat me on the arm, 
and say, "Go on, boy, go on, don't mind 
me. I wasn't laughing at you. I was think- 
ing of something else. What was it? Oh, 
a railroad wreck, well, don't stop, go on 
reading." 

As soon as we were seated Mr. Puhtzer 
turned to me and began to question me about 



48 JOSEPH PULITZER 

my reading. Had I read any recent fiction? 
No? Well, what had I read within the past 
month? 

I named several books which I had been 
re-reading — Macaulay's Essays, Meredith 
Townsend's Asia and Europe, and Lowes 
Dickinson's Modern Symposium, 

"Well, tell me something about Asia and 
Europe/' he said. 

I left my dinner untasted, and for a 
quarter of an hour held forth on the life of 
Mohammed, on the courage of the Arabians, 
on the charm of Asia for Asiatics, and on 
other matters taken from Mr. Townsend's 
fascinating book. Suddenly Mr, Puhtzer 
interrupted me. 

"My God! You don't mean to tell me 
that anyone is interested in that sort of rub- 
bish. Everybody knows about Mohammed, 
and about the bravery of the Arabs, and, for 
God's sake, why shouldn't Asia be attractive 
to the Asiatics! Try something else. Do 
you remember any plays?" 

Yes, I remembered several pretty well. 
Shaw's Ccesar and Cleopatra for instance, 



JOSEPH PULITZER 49i 

"Go on, then, try and tell me about that." 

My prospects of getting any dinner faded 
away as I began my new effort. Fortu- 
nately I knew the play very well, and re- 
membered a number of passages almost 
word for word. I soon saw that Mr. Pulit- 
zer was interested and pleased, not with the 
play as anything new to him, for he prob- 
ably knew it better than I did, but with my 
presentation of it, because it showed some 
ability to compress narrative without de- 
stroying its character and also gave some 
proof of a good memory. 

When I reached the scene in which Csesar 
replies to Britannus's protest against the 
recognition of Cleopatra's marriage to her 
brother, Ptolemy, by saying, "Pardon him, 
Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks 
that the customs of his tribe are the laws of 
nature," Mr. Pulitzer burst into an uncon- 
trollable fit of laughter. 

I was about to continue, and try to make 
good better, when Mr. Pulitzer raised his 
hands above his head in remonstrance. 

"Stop! Stop! For God's sake! You're 



50 JOSEPH PULITZER 

hurting me," very much as a person with a 
cracked lip begs for mercy when you are in 
the middle of your most humorous story. 

I found out later that, in order to keep 
in Mr. Pulitzer's good graces, it was as 
necessary to avoid being too funny as it was 
to avoid being too dull, for, while the latter 
fault hurt his intellectual sensitiveness, the 
former involved, through the excessive 
laughter it produced, a degree of involun- 
tary exertion which, in his disordered physi- 
cal condition, caused him acute pain. 

Mr. Pulitzer's constant use of the excla- 
mations "My God!" and "For God's sake!" 
had no relation whatever to swearing, as 
the term is usually understood; they were 
employed exactly as a French lady employs 
the exclamation Mon Dieul or a German 
the expression AcJi^ du Hebe Gott! As 
a matter of fact, although Mr. Pulitzer was 
a man of strong and, at times, violent emo- 
tions, and, from his deplorable nervous 
state, excessively irritable, I do not think 
that in the eight months I was with him, 
during the greater part of which time he 



JOSEPH PULITZER 51 

was not under any restraining influence, 
such as might be exerted by the presence of 
ladies, I heard him use any oath except oc- 
casionally a "damn," which appealed to him, 
I think, as a suitable if not a necessary quaK- 
fication of the word "fool." For Mr. Pulit- 
zer there were no fools except damned fools. 
After the excitement about Ccesar and 
Cleopatra had subsided, IVir. Pulitzer asked 
me if I had a good memory. I hesitated 
before replying, because I had seen enough 
of Mr. Puhtzer in an hour to realize that 
a constant exercise of caution would be 
necessary if I wished to avoid offending his 
prejudices or wounding his susceptibilities; 
and whereas on the one hand I did not wish 
to set a standard for myself which I would 
find it impossible to live up to, on the other 
hand I was anxious to avoid giving any de- 
scription of my abilities which would be fol- 
lowed later by a polite intimation from the 
major-domo that Mr. Puhtzer had enjoyed 
my visit immensely but that I was not just 
the man for the place. 



52 JOSEPH PULITZER 

So I compromised and said that I had a 
fairly good memory. 

"Well, everybody thinks he's got a good 
memory," replied Mr. Pulitzer. 

"I only claimed a fairly good one," I pro- 
tested. 

"Oh! that's just an affectation; as a mat- 
ter of fact you think you've got a splendid 
memory, don't you? Now, be frank about 
it; I love people to be frank with me." 

My valor got the better of my discretion, 
and I replied that if he really wished me to 
be frank I was willing to admit that I had 
no particular desire to lay claim to a good 
memory, for I was inclined to accept the 
view which I had once heard expressed by 
a very wise man of my acquaintance that 
the human mind was not intended to re- 
member with but to think with, and that 
one of the greatest benefits which had been 
conferred on mankind by the discovery of 
printing was that thousands of things could 
be recorded for reference which former gen- 
erations had been compelled to learn by rote. 

"Your wise friend," he cried, "was a 



JOSEPH PULITZER 53 

damned fool! If you will give the matter 
a moment's thought you'll see that memory 
is the highest faculty of the human mind. 
What becomes of all your reading, all your 
observation, your experience, study, investi- 
gations, discussions — in a rushing crescendo 
— if you have no memory?" 

"I might reply," I said, "by asking what 
use it is to lumber up your mind with a mass 
of information of which you are only going 
to make an occasional use when you can 
have it filed away in encyclopedias and other 
works of reference, and in card indexes, in- 
stantly available when you want it." 

I spoke in a light and rather humorous 
tone in order to take the edge off my dissent 
from his opinion, reflecting that even be- 
tween friends and equals a demand for 
frankness is most safely to be regarded as 
a danger signal to impulsiveness ; but it was 
too late, I had evidently overstepped the 
mark, for Mr. Pulitzer turned abruptly 
from me without replying, and began to 
talk to the gentleman on his left. 

This had the twofold advantage of giving 



54i JOSEPH PULITZER 

me time to reconsider my strategy, and to 
eat some dinner, which one of the footmen, 
evidently the kind with a memory for for- 
mer experiences, had set on one side and 
kept warm against the moment when I would 
be free to enjoy it. 

As I ate I listened to the conversation. 
It made my heart sink. The gentleman to 
whom Mr. Pulitzer had transferred his at- 
tentions was a Scotchman, Mr. William Ro- 
maine Paterson. I discovered later that he 
was the nearest possible approach to a walk- 
ing encyclopedia. His range of informa- 
tion was — well, I am tempted to say, in- 
famous. He appeared to have an exhaus- 
tive knowledge of French, German, Italian, 
and English literature, of European his- 
tory in its most complicated ramifications, 
and of general biography in such a meas- 
ure that, in regard to people as well known 
as Goethe, Voltaire, Kossuth, Napoleon, 
Garibaldi, Eismarck, and a score of others, 
he could ^x sl precise day on which any 
event or conversation had taken place, and 
recall it in its minutest details. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 55 

It was not simply from the standpoint of 
my own ignorance that Paterson's store of 
knowledge assmned such vast proportions, 
for it was seldom opened except in the pres- 
ence of JNIr. Pulitzer, in whom were com- 
bined a tenacious memory, a profound ac- 
quaintance with the subjects which Pater- 
son had taken for his province, an analytic 
mind, and a zest for contradiction. Every- 
thing Paterson said was immediately 
pounced upon by a vigorous, astute, and 
well-informed critic who derived pecuhar 
satisfaction from the rare instances in which 
he could detect him in an inaccuracy. 

The conversation between Mr. Pulitzer 
and Paterson, or, rather, Paterson's fre- 
quently interrupted monologue, lasted until 
we had all finished dinner, and the butler 
had lighted Mr. Pulitzer's cigar. In the 
middle of an eloquent passage from Pater- 
son, Mr. Pulitzer rose, turned abruptly to- 
ward me, held out his hand, and said, "I'm 
very glad to have met you, Mr. Ireland ; you 
have entertained me very much. Please 
come here to-morrow at eleven o'clock, and 



56 JOSEPH PULITZER 

I'll take you out for a drive. Good-night." 
He took Paterson's arm and left the room. 

The door, like all the doors in Mr. Pulit- 
zer's various residences, shut automatically 
and silently ; and after one of the secretaries 
had drawn a heavy velvet curtain across the 
doorway, so that not the faintest sound could 
escape from the room, I was chaffed good- 
naturedly about my debut as a candidate. 
To my great surprise I was congratulated 
on having done very well. 

"You made a great hit," said one, "with 
your account of Shaw's play." 

"I nearly burst out laughing," said an- 
other, "when you gave your views about 
memory. I think you're dead right about 
it; but J. P. — Mr. Pulitzer was always re- 
ferred to as J. P. — is crazy about people 
having good memories, so if you've really 
got a good memory you'd better let him find 
it out." 

I was told that, so far as we were con- 
cerned, the day's work, or at least that por- 
tion of it which involved being with J. P., 
was to be considered over as soon as he re- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 57 

tired to the library after dinner. His object 
then was to be left alone with one secretary, 
who read to him until about ten o'clock, when 
the major-domo came and took him to his 
rooms for the night. As a rule, J. P. made 
no further demand on the bodily presence 
of his secretaries after he had gone to bed, 
but occasionally, when he could not sleep, 
one of them would be called, perhaps at three 
in the morning, to read to him. 

This meant in practice that, when we were 
ashore, one, or more usually two of us, would 
remain in the house in case of emergency. 
This did not by any means imply that we 
were always free from work after ten 
o'clock at night, in fact the very opposite 
was true, for it was J. P.'s custom to 
say, during dinner, that on the following 
day he would ride, drive, or walk with such 
a one or such a one, naming him; and the 
victim — a term frequently used with a good 
deal of surprisingly frank enjoyment by 
J. P. himself — ^had often to work well into 
the night preparing material for conversa- 
tion. 



58 JOSEPH PULITZER 

I saw something of what this preparation 
meant before I left the villa after my first 
meeting with J. P. Two of the secretaries 
said they would go over to Monte Carlo, 
and they asked me to go with them; but I 
declined, preferring to remain behind for 
a chat with one of the secretaries, Mr. Nor- 
man G. Thwaites, an Englishman, who was 
secretary in a more technical sense than any 
of the rest of us, for he was a shorthand 
writer and did most of J. P/s Correspond- 
ence. 

After the others had gone he showed me 
a table in the entrance hall of the villa, on 
which was a big pile of mail just arrived 
from London. It included a great num- 
ber of newspapers and weeklies, several cop- 
ies of each. There were The Times, The 
Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The 
Morning Post, The Daily News, The West- 
minster Gazette, Truth The Spectator, The 
Saturday Review; The Nation, The Out- 
look, and some other London publications, 
as well as the Paris editions of the New 
York Herald and The Daily Mail, 



JOSEPH PULITZER 59 

Thwaites selected a copy of each and then 
led the way to his bedroom, a large room on 
the top floor, from which we could see across 
the bay the brilliant lights of Monte Carlo, 

He then explained to me that he had been 
selected to read to J. P. whilst the latter 
had his breakfast and his after-breakfast 
cigar the next morning. In order to do this 
satisfactorily he had to go over the papers 
and read carefully whatever he could find 
that was suited to J. P.'s taste at that par- 
ticular time of the day. During the break- 
fast hour J. P. would not have anything 
read to him which was of an exciting nature. 
This preference excluded political news, 
crime, disaster, and war correspondence, and 
left practically nothing but book reviews, 
criticisms of plays, operas, and art exhibi- 
tions, and publishers' announcements. 

The principal sources of information on 
these topics were the hterary supplement of 
the London Times, the Literary Digest, and 
the liteTSLTy, dramatic, and musical columns 
of the Athenceum, The Spectator, and the 
Saturday Review. 



60 JOSEPH PULITZER 

These had to be "prepared," to use J. P.'s 
phrase, which meant that they were read 
over rapidly once and then gone over again 
with some concentration so that the more 
important articles could be marked for ac- 
tual reading, the other portions being dealt 
with conversationally, everything being 
boiled down to its essence before it reached 
Mr. Pulitzer's ear. 

As it was getting late, and as I knew 
that Thwaites would be on tap early in the 
morning, for J. P. usually breakfasted be- 
fore nine, and the "victim" was supposed 
to have had his own breakfast by eight, I 
left the villa and went back to the yacht. 

As he said good-night, Thwaites gave me 
a copy of The Daily Telegraph and advised 
me to read it carefully, as J. P. might ask 
me for the day's news during the drive we 
were to take the following morning. 

Before going to sleep I glanced through 
The Daily Telegraph and came across an 
article which gave me an idea for establish- 
ing my reputation for memory. It was a 
note about the death duties which had been 



JOSEPH PULITZER 61 

collected in England during 1910, and it 
gave a list of about twenty estates on which 
large sums had been paid. The list included 
the names of the deceased and also the 
amounts on which probate duty had been 
paid. I decided to commit these names and 
figures to memory and to take an occasion 
the next day to reel them off to J. P. 

Punctually at eleven o'clock I presented 
myself at the villa to find, to my dismay, 
J. P. seated in his automobile in a tower- 
ing rage. Wliat sort of consideration had 
I for him to keep him waiting for half an 
hour ! 

I protested that eleven o'clock was the 
hour of the appointment. I was absolutely 
wrong, he said, half -past-ten was the time, 
and he remembered perfectly naming that 
hour, because he wanted a long drive and 
he had an engagement with Mr. Paterson 
at noon. 

"I'm awfully sorry," I began, "if I mis- 
understood you, but really . . ." 

He dismissed the matter abruptly by say- 
ing, "For God's sake, don't argue about it. 



62 JOSEPH PULITZER 

Get in and sit next to me so that I can hear 
you talk." 

As soon as we had got clear of the village, 
and were spinning along at a good rate on 
the Corniche road, which circles the Bay of 
Monaco, high on the mountain side, Mr. 
Pulitzer began to put me through my paces. 

"Now, Mr. Ireland," he began, "you will 
understand that if any arrangement is to 
be concluded between us I must explore your 
brain, your character, your tastes, your sym- 
pathies, your prejudices, your temper; I 
must find out if you have tact, patience, a 
sense of humor, the gift of condensing in- 
formation, and, above all, a respect, a love, 
a passion for accuracy." 

I began to speak, but he interrupted me 
before I had got six words out of my mouth. 

"Wait! Wait!" he cried, "let me finish 
what I have to say. You'll find this busi- 
ness of being a candidate a very trying and 
disagreeable one ; well, it's damned disagree- 
able to me, too. What I need is rest, repose, 
quiet, routine, understanding, sympathy, 
friendship, yes, my God! the friendship of 



JOSEPH PULITZER 63 

those around me. Mr. Ireland, I can do 
much, I can do everything for a man who 
will be my friend. I can give him power, 
I can give him wealth, I can give him repu- 
tation, the power, the wealth, the reputation 
which come to a man who speaks to a million 
people a day in the columns of a great paper. 
But how am I to do this? I am blind, I'm 
an invalid; how am I to know whom I can 
trust? I don't mean in money matters; 
money's nothing to me; it can do nothing 
for me; I mean morally, intellectually. I've 
had scores of people pass through my hands 
in the last fifteen years — Englishmen, 
Scotchmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, Germans, 
Frenchmen, Americans, men of so-called 
high family, men of humble birth, men from 
a dozen universities, self-taught men, young 
men, old men, and, my God! what have I 
found? Arrogance, stupidity, ingratitude, 
loose thinking, conceit, ignorance, laziness, 
indifference; absence of tact, discretion, 
courtesy, mamiers, consideration, sympathy, 
devotion; no knowledge, no wisdom, no in- 
telligence, no observation, no memory, no 



64 JOSEPH PULITZER 

insight, no understanding. My God! I can 
hardly believe my own experience when I 
think of it." 

Set down in cold print, this outburst loses 
almost every trace of its intensely dramatic 
character. Mr. Pulitzer spoke as though he 
were declaiming a part in a highly emotional 
play. At times he turned toward me, his 
clenched fists raised above his shoulders, at 
times he threw back his head, flung his out- 
stretched hands at arms' length in front of 
him, as though he were appealing to the 
earth, to the sea, to the air, to the remote 
canopy of the sky to hear his denunciation 
of man's inefficiency; at times he paused, 
laid a hand on my arm, and fixed his eye 
upon me as if he expected the darkness to 
yield him some image of my thought. It 
was almost impossible to believe at such a 
moment that he was totally blind, that he 
could not distinguish night from day. 

"Mind!" he continued, raising a caution- 
ary finger, "I'm not making any criticism 
of my present staff ; you may consider your- 
self very lucky if I find you to have a quar- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 65 

ter of the good qualities which any one of 
them has ; and let me tell you that while you 
are with me you will do well to observe these 
gentlemen and to try and model yourself on 
them. 

"However, all that doesn't matter so much 
in your case, because there's no question of 
your becoming one of my personal staff. 
I haven't any vacancy at present, and I don't 
foresee any. What I want you for is some- 
thing quite different." 

Imagine my amazement. No vacancy on 
the staff! What about the advertisement I 
had answered? What about all the inter- 
view's and correspondence, in which a com- 
panionship had been the only thing dis- 
cussed? What could the totally different 
thing be of which Mr. Pulitzer spoke? 

In the midst of my confusion Mr. Pulitzer 
said, "Look out of the window and tell me 
what you see. Remember that I am blind, 
and try and make me get a mental picture of 
everything — everything, you understand ; 
never think that anything is too small or 
insignificant to be of interest to me; you 



66 JOSEPH PULITZER 

can't tell what may interest me; always de- 
scribe everything with the greatest minute- 
ness, every cloud in the sky, every shadow 
on the hillside, every tree, every house, every 
dress, every wrinkle on a face, everything, 
everything!" 

I did my best, and he appeared to be 
pleased; but before I had half exhausted 
the details of the magnificent scene above 
and below us he stopped me suddenly with 
a request that I should tell him exactly what 
had occurred from the time I had answered 
his advertisement up to the moment of my 
arrival at the villa. 

This demand placed me in rather an awk- 
ward predicament, for I had to try and 
reconcile the fact that the advertisement it- 
self as well as all my conversations with his 
agents and with his son had been directed 
toward the idea of a companionship, with 
his positive assertion that there was no va- 
cancy on his personal staff and that he 
wanted me for another, and an undisclosed 
purpose. Here was a very clear opportu- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 67 

nity for destroying my reputation, either for 
tact or for accuracy. 

There was, of course, only one thing to 
do, and that was to tell him exactly what 
had taken place. This I did, and at the end 
of my recital he said, "It's simply amazing 
how anyone can get a matter tangled up the 
way you have. There was never a question 
of your becoming one of my companions. 
What I want is a man to go out to the 
Philippines and write a series of vigorous 
articles showing the bungle we've made of 
that business, and paving the way for an 
agitation in favor of giving the Islands 
their independence. There'll be a chance of 
getting that done if we elect a Democratic 
President in 1912." 

"Well, sir," I replied, "if the bungle has 
been as bad as you think I certainly ought 
to be able to do the work to your satisfac- 
tion. I'm pretty familiar with the condi- 
tions of tropical life, I've written a good 
deal on the subject, I've been in the Philip- 
pines and have published a book and a num- 
ber of articles about them, and, although 



68 JOSEPH PULITZER 

I don't take as gloomy a view as you do 
about the administration o it there, I found 
a good deal to criticize, and if I go out I 
can certainly describe the conditions as they 
are now, and your editorial v/riters can put 
my articles to whatever use they may wish." 
"You're going too fast/' he said, "and 
you're altogether too cock-sure of your abili- 
ties. You mustn't think that because you've 
written articles for the L ulon Times you 
are competent to write for The World. It's 
a very different matter. The American peo- 
ple want something terse, forcible, pic- 
turesque, striking, something that will arrest 
their attention, enlist their sympathy, arouse 
their indignation, stimulate their imagina- 
tion, convince their reason, awaken their 
conscience. Why should I accept you at 
your own estimate? You don't reaUze the 
responsibility I have in this matter. The 
World isn't like your Times, with its forty 
or fifty thousand educated readers. It's read 
by, well, say a million people a day; and it's 
my duty to see that they get the truth; but 
that's not enough, I've got to put it before 



JOSEPH PULITZER 69 

them briefly so that they will read it, clearly 
so that they will understand it, forcibly so 
that they will appreciate it, picturesquely 
so that they will remember it, and, above 
all, accurately so that they may be wisely 
guided by its light. And you come to me, 
and before you've been here a day you ask 
me to entrust you with an important mission 
which concerns the integrity of my paper, 
the conscience of my readers, the policy of 
my country, no, my God! you're too cock- 
sure of yourself." 

By this time Mr. Pulitzer had worked 
himself up into a state of painful excite- 
ment. His forehead was damp with per- 
spiration, he clasped and unclasped his 
hands, his voice became louder and higher- 
pitched from moment to moment ; but when 
he suddenly stopped speaking he calmed 
down instantly. 

"You shouldn't let me talk so much," he 
said, without, however, suggesting any 
means by which I could stop him. "What 
time is it? Are we nearly home? Well, Mr. 
Ireland, I'll let you off for the afternoon; 



70 JOSEPH PULITZER 

go and enjoy yourself and forget all about 
me." Then, as the auto drew up at the door 
of the villa, "Come up to dinner about seven 
and try to be amusing. You did very well 
last night. I hope you can keep it up. It's 
most important that anyone who is to live 
with me should have a sense of humor. I'd 
be glad to keep a man and pay him a hand- 
some salary if he would make me laugh once 
a day. Well, good-by till to-night." 



CHAPTEH III 

Life at Cap Martin 

THERE was no lack of humor in Mr. 
Pulitzer's suggestion that I should 
go and enjoy myself and forget him. I 
went down to the yacht, had lunch in soli- 
tary state, and then, selecting a comfortable 
chair in the smoking-room, settled down to 
think things over. 

It soon became clear to me that J. P. was 
a man of a character so completely outside 
the range of my experience that any skill 
of judgment I might have acquired through 
contact with many men of many races would 
avail me little in my intercourse with him. 

That he was arbitrary, self -centered, and 
exacting mattered httle to me ; it was a com- 
bination of qualities which rumor had led 
me to expect in him, and with which I had 

71 



72 JOSEPH PULITZER 

become familiar in my acqj Yaintance with 
men of wide authority and outstanding abil- 
ity. What disturbed me was that his blind- 
ness, his ill health, and his suffering had 
united to these traits an intense excitability 
and a morbid nervousness. 

My first impulse was to attribute his 
capriciousness to a weakening of his brain 
power; but I could not reconcile this view 
with the vigor of his thought, with the clear- 
ness of his expression, with the amplitude 
of his knowledge, with the scope of his mem- 
ory as they had been disclosed the previous 
night in his conversation with Paterson. 
No, the fact was that I had not found the 
key to his motives, the cipher running 
through the artificial confusion of his ac- 
tions. 

I could not foresee the issue of the ad- 
venture. In the meantime, however, the 
yacht was a comfortable home, the Cote 
df'Azur was a new field of observation, J. P. 
and his secretaries were extremely interest- 
ing, the honorarium was accumulating stead- 
ily, and in the background Barbados still 



JOSEPH PULITZER 73 

slept in the sunshine, an emerald in a sapph- 
ire sea. 

During the afternoon I had a visit from 
Jabez E. Dunningham, the major-domo. I 
pay tribute to him here as one of the most 
remarkable men I have ever met, an opinion 
which I formed after months of daily inter- 
course with him. He was an Englishman, 
and he had spent nearly twenty years with 
Mr. Pulitzer, traveling with him everywhere, 
hardly ever separated from him for more 
than a few hours, and he was more closely in 
his confidence than anyone outside the 
family. 

He was capable and efficient in the high- 
est degree. His duties ranged from those 
of a nurse to those of a diplomat. He pro- 
duced, at a moment's notice, as a conjuror 
produces rabbits and goldfish, the latest hot- 
water bottle from a village pharmacy in 
Elba, special trains from haughty and re- 
luctant officials of State railways, bales of 
newspapers mysteriously collected from 
clubs, hotels, or consulates in remote and 
microscopic ports, fruits and vegetables out 



74 JOSEPH PULITZER 

of season, rooms, suites, floors of hotels at 
the height of the rush in the most crowded 
resorts, or a dozen cabins in a steamer. 

He could open telegraph stations and post 
oiBces when they were closed to the native 
nobility, convert the eager curiosity of port 
officials into a trance-like indifference, or 
monopolize the services of a whole adminis- 
tration, if the comfort, convenience, or 
caprice of his master demanded it. 

More than this; if, any of these things 
having been done, they should appear un- 
desirable to Mr. Puhtzer, Dunningham 
could undo them with the same magician- 
like ease as had ma^rked their achievement. 
A wave of Mr. Pulitzer's hand was trans- 
lated into action by Dunningham, and the 
whole of his arrangements disappeared as 
completely as if they had never existed. The 
slate was wiped clean, ready in an instant 
to receive the new message from Mr. Pulit- 
zer's will. 

Dunningham had come to offer me ad- 
vice. I must not be disturbed by the ap- 
parent eccentricity of Mr. Pulitzer's con- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 75 

duct; it was merely part of Mr. Pulitzer's 
fixed policy to make things as complicated 
and difficult as possible for a candidate. By 
adopting this plan he was able to discover 
very quickly whether there was any possi- 
bility that a new man would suit him. If 
the candidate showed impatience or bad 
temper he could be got rid of at once; if 
he showed tact and good humor he would 
graduate into another series of tests, and 
so on, step by step, until the period of his 
trying out was ended and he became one of 
the staff. 

A man of my intelligence would, of 
course, appreciate the advantages of such a 
method, even from the standpoint of the 
candidate, for once a candidate had passed 
the testing stage he w^ould find his relations 
with Mr. Pulitzer much pleasanter and his 
work less exacting, whereas if he found at 
the outset that the conditions were not pleas- 
ing to him he could retire without having 
wasted much time. 

One thing I must bear in mind, namely, 
that each day which passed without Mr. 



76 JOSEPH PULITZER 

Pulitzer having decided against a candidate 
increased the candidate's chances. If a man 
was to be rejected it was usually done inside 
of a week from his first appearance on the 
scene. 

And, by the way, had I ever noticed how 
people were apt to think that blind people 
were deaf? A most curious thing; reaUy 
nothing in it. Take Mr. Pulitzer, for ex- 
ample, so far from his being deaf he had 
the most exquisite sense of hearing, in fact 
he heard better when people spoke below 
rather than above their ordinary tone. 

Thus, Dunningham, anxious, in his mas- 
ter's interest, to allay my nervousness, which 
reacted disagreeably on Mr. Pulitzer, and 
to make me lower my voice. 

I went up to the villa during the after- 
noon to look at the house and, if possible, 
to have a talk with some of the secretaries. 

The villa lay on the Western slope of Cap 
Martin, a few hundred yards from the Villa 
Cyrnos, occupied by the Empress Eugenie. 
Seen from the road there was nothing strik- 
ing in its appearance, but seen from the 



JOSEPH PULITZER 77 

other side it was delightful, recalling the 
drop scene of a theater. Situated on a steep 
slope, embowered in trees, its broad stone 
veranda overhung a series of ornamental 
terraces decorated with palms, flowers, stat- 
uary, and fountains ; and where these ended 
a jumble of rocks and stunted pines fell 
away abruptly to the blue water of the bay. 

The house was large and well designed, 
but very simple in its furniture and decora- 
tions. The upper rooms on the Western 
side commanded a superb view of the Bay 
of Monaco, and of the rugged hillsides 
above La Turbie, cro^vned with a vague out- 
line of fortifications against the sky. 

In a room at the top of the house I found 
one of the secretaries, an Englishman, Mr. 
George Craven, formerly in the Indian 
Civil Service in Rajputana. He was en- 
gaged in auditing the accounts of the yacht, 
but he readily fell in with my suggestion 
that we should take a stroll. 

"Right-ho!" he said. "I'm sick of these 
beastly accounts. But we must find out 
what J. P.'s doing first." 



78 JOSEPH PULITZER 

It appeared that J. P. had motored over 
to Monte Carlo to hear a concert, and that 
he wasn't expected back for an hour or more. 
As we stopped in the entrance hall to get 
our hats I struck a match on the sole of my 
shoe, intending to Ught a cigarette. 

"By Jove! Don't do that, for Heaven's 
sake," said Craven, "or there'll be a fright- 
ful row when J. P. comes in. He can't 
stand cigarette smoke, and he's got a sense 
of smell as keen as a setter's." 

We went into the garden and followed a 
narrow path which led down to the water- 
side. We talked about J. P. As a matter 
of fact, J. P. was the principal topic of 
conversation whenever two of his secretaries 
found themselves together. 

Craven, however, had only been with J. P. 
for a few weeks, having been one of the 
batch sifted out of the six hundred who 
had answered the Times advertisement. He 
was almost as much in the dark as I was 
in regard to the real J. P. that existed 
somewhere behind the mask which was al- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 79 

ways held out in front of every emotion, 
every thought, every intention. 

The life was difficult, he found, and ex- 
tremely laborious. When it suited his book 
J. P. could be one of the most fascinating 
and entertaining of men, but when it didn't, 
well, he wasn't. The truth was that you 
could never tell what he really thought at 
any moment; it made you feel as though 
you were blind and not he ; you found your- 
self groping around all the time for a good 
lead and coming unexpectedly up against a 
stone wall. 

"I've been with him a couple of months," 
he said, "and I haven't the slightest idea 
whether he thinks me a good sort or a silly 
ass, and I don't suppose I ever shall know. 
By Jove, there he is now!" as we heard the 
crunch of tires on the drive. "Excuse me if 
I make a run for it; he may want me any 
minute. See you later." 

At dinner that night Mr. Pulitzer de- 
voted his whole attention to laying bare the 
vast areas of ignorance on the map of my 
information. He carried me from country 



80 JOSEPH PULITZER 

to country, from century to century, 
through history, art, literature, biography, 
economics, music, the drama, and current 
politics. V^riienever he hit upon some small 
spot where my investigations had lingered 
and where my memory served me he left it 
immediately, with the remark, "Well, I 
don't care about that; that doesn't amount 
to anything, anyhow." 

It was worse than useless to make any 
pretense of knowing things, for if you said 
you knew a play, for instance, J. P. would 
say, "Good! Now begin at the second scene 
of the third act, where the curtain rises on 
the two conspirators in the courtyard of the 
hotel; just carry it along from there" — and 
if you didn't know it thoroughly you were 
soon in difficulties. 

His method was nicely adjusted to his 
needs, for he was concerned most of the 
time to get entertainment as well as infor- 
mation; and he was, therefore, amused by 
exposing your ignorance when he was not 
informed by uncovering your knowledge. 
Indeed, nothing put him in such good humor 



JOSEPH PULITZER 81 

as to discover a cleft in your intellectual 
armor, provided that you really possessed 
some talent, faculty, or resource which was 
useful to him. 

My dinner, considered as a dinner, was as 
great a failure as my conversation, consid- 
ered as an exhibition of learning. I got no 
more than a hasty mouthful now and again, 
and got that only through a device often 
resorted to by the secretaries under such cir- 
cumstances, but which seldom met with much 
success. 

J. P. himself had to eat, and from time 
to time the butler, who always stood behind 
J. P.'s chair, and attended to him only, 
would take advantage of an instant's pause 
in the conversation to say, "Your fish is get- 
ting cold, sir." 

This would divert J. P.'s attention from 
his victim long enough to allow one of the 
other men to break in with a remark de- 
signed to draw J. P.'s fire. It worked once 
in a while, but as a rule it had no effect 
whatever beyond making J. P. hurry 
through the course so that he could renew 



82 JOSEPH PULITZER 

his attack at the point where he had sus- 
pended it. 

On the particular occasion I am describ- 
ing I was fortunate enough toward the end 
of dinner to regain some of the ground I 
had lost in my disorderly flight across the 
field of scholarship. One of the secretaries 
seized an opportunity to refer to the British 
death duties. I had intended to arrange 
for the introduction of this topic, but had 
forgotten to do so. It was just sheer good 
luck, and I made signs to the gentleman to 
keep it up. He did so, and the moment he 
ceased speaking I took up the tale. It was 
a good subject, for J. P. was interested in 
the question of death duties. 

After a preliminary flourish I began to 
reel off the figures I had committed to mem- 
ory the previous night. Before I had got 
very far Mr. Pulitzer cried. 

"Stop! Are you reading those figures?" 

"No," I replied. "I read them over last 
night in the Daily Telegraph/^ 

"My God! Are you giving them from 
memory? Haven't you got a note of them 



JOSEPH PULITZER 83 

in your hand? Hasn't he? Hasn't he? 
. . ." appealing to the table. 

Reassured on this point he said, "Well, 
go on, go on. This interests me." 

As soon as I had finished he turned to 
Craven and said, "Go and get that paper, 
and find the article." 

When Craven returned with it, he con- 
tinued, "Now, Mr. Ireland, go over those 
figures again; and you, Mr. Craven, check 
them off and see if they're correct. Now, 
play fair, no tricks!" 

I had made two mistakes, which were re- 
ported as soon as they were spoken. At 
the end Mr. PuUtzer said: 

"Well, you see, you hadn't got them 
right, after all. But that's not so bad. 
With a memory like that you might have 
known something by now if you'd only had 
the diligence to read." 

My second score was made just at the 
end of dinner, or rather when dinner had 
been finished some time and J. P. was lin- 
gering at table over his cigar. The question 
of humor came up, and someone remarked 



84 JOSEPH PULITZER 

how curious it was that one of the favorite 
amusements of the American humorist 
should be to make fun of the EngUshman 
for his lack of humor — "Laugh, and all the 
world laughs with you, except the English- 
man," and so on. The usual defenses were 
made — Hood, Thackeray, Gilbert, Calver- 
ley, etc. — and then Punch was referred to. 

This gave me the chance of repeating, 
more or less accurately, a paragraph which 
appeared in Punch some years ago, and 
which I always recite when that delightful 
periodical is slandered in my hearing. It 
ran something after this fashion: 

"One of our esteemed contemporaries is 
very much worked up in its mind about 
Mr. Balfour's foreign policy, which it com- 
pares to that of the camel, which, when pur- 
sued, buries its head in the sand. We quite 
agree with our esteemed contemporary about 
Mr. Balfour's foreign policy, but we fear 
it is getting its metaphors mixed. Surely it 
is not thinking of the camel which, when 
pursued, buries its head in the sand, but of 



JOSEPH PULITZER 85 

the ostrich which, when pursued, runs its eye 
through a needle." 

It was a lucky hit. No one had heard it 
before, and our party broke up with Mr. 
Puhtzer in high good humor. 

So the days passed. I saw^ a great deal of 
Mr. Pulitzer and went through many agon- 
izing hours of cross-examination; but grad- 
ually matters came round to the point where 
we discussed the possibility of my becoming 
a member of his personal staff. He thought 
that there was some hope that, if he put me 
through a rigorous training, I might suit 
him, but before it could even be settled that 
such an attempt should be made many things 
would have to be cleared up. 

In the first place, I would understand 
what extreme caution was necessary for him 
in making a selection. There was not only 
the question of whether I could make myself 
useful to him, and the question of whether 
I could be trusted in a relationship of such 
a confidential nature, there remained the 
very important question of whether I was a 
fit person to associate with the lady mem- 



86 JOSEPH PULITZER 

bers of his family, who spent some portion 
of each year with him. 

This matter was discussed very frankly, 
and was then shelved pending a reference 
to a number of people in England and 
America at whose homes I had been a guest, 
and where the household included ladies. 

At the end of a week the yacht was sent 
to Marseilles to coal in preparation for a 
cruise, and I went to stay at an hotel near 
the villa. It was a change for the worse. 

By the time the yacht returned I had had 
some opportunity of observing the routine 
of life at the villa. After breakfast Mr. 
Pulitzer went for a drive, accompanied by 
one, or occasionally by two, of the secre- 
taries. During this drive he received a 
rough summary of the morning's news, the 
papers having been gone over and marked 
either the night before or while he was hav- 
ing his breakfast. 

As he seldom let us know in advance 
which of us he would call upon for the first 
presentation of the news, and as he was 
liable to change his mind at the last minute 



JOSEPH PULITZER 87 

when he had named somebody the previous 
night, we had all of us to go through the 
papers with great care, so that we might be 
prepared if we were called upon. 

On returning from his drive Mr. Pulitzer 
would either sit in the Hbrary and dictate 
letters and cablegrams, or he would have the 
news gone over in detail, or, if the state of 
his health forbade the mental exertion in- 
volved in the intense concentration with 
which he absorbed what was read to him 
from the papers, he would go for a ride, 
accompanied by a groom and by one of the 
secretaries. When he went to Europe he 
usually sent over in advance some horses 
from his own stable, as he was very fond 
of riding and could not trust himself on a 
strange horse. 

After the ride, lunch, at which the conver- 
sation generally took a more serious turn 
than at dinner, for at night Mr. Pulitzer 
disliked any discussion of matters which 
were likely to arouse his interest very much 
or to stir his emotions, for he found it diffi- 
cult to get his mind calmed down so that 



88 JOSEPH PULITZER 

he could sleep. Even in regard to lunch we 
were sometimes warned in advance, either 
by Dunningham or by the secretary who 
had left him just before lunch was served, 
that Mr. Pulitzer wished the conversation 
to be light and uncontroversial. 

Immediately after lunch Mr. Pulitzer re- 
tired to his bedroom with Herr Friederich 
Mann, the German secretary, and was read 
to, chiefly German plays, until he fell asleep, 
or until he had had an hour or so of rest. 

By four o'clock he was ready to go out 
again, riding, if he had not had a ride in 
the morning, or driving, with an occasional 
walk for perhaps half-an-hour, the auto- 
mobile always remaining within call. As a 
rule he spent an hour before dinner listen- 
ing to someone read, a novel, a biography, 
or what not, according to his mood. 

At dinner the conversation usually ran 
along the lines of what was being read to 
him by the various secretaries or of such 
topics in the day's news as were of an un- 
exciting nature. The meal varied greatly 
in length. If J. P. was feeling tired, or 



JOSEPH PULITZER 89 

out of sorts, he eat his dinner quickly and 
left us, taking somebody along to read to 
him until he was ready to go to bed. But, 
if he was in good form, and an interesting 
topic was started, or if he was in a remi- 
niscent mood and wanted to talk, dinner 
would last from half -past-seven to nine, or 
even later. 

I shall deal in another place with the dif- 
ferent phases of the conversation and read- 
ing which formed so large a part of our 
duties, but I may refer here to various in- 
cidents of our routine and to some things 
by which our routine was occasionally dis- 
turbed. 

Mr. Pulitzer was very fond of walking. 
His usual practice was to leave the villa in 
the automobile and drive either down to the 
plage at Mentone or up the hill to a point 
about midway between Cap Martin and the 
Tower of Augustus. When he reached the 
spot he had selected he took the arm of a 
secretary and promenaded backward and 
forward over a distance of five hundred 



90 JOSEPH PULITZER 

yards, until he felt tired, when the auto- 
mobile was signaled and we drove home. 

Each of his favorite spots for walking 
had its peculiar disadvantages for his com- 
panion. Speaking for myself I can say that 
I dreaded these walks more than any other 
of my duties. 

If we went on the hillside I had to keep 
the most alert and unrelaxing lookout for 
automobiles. They came dashing round the 
sharp curves with a roar and a scream, and 
these distracting noises always made Mr. 
Pulitzer stop dead still as though he were 
rooted to the ground. 

I understand that Mr. Pulitzer was never 
actually hit by an automobile, and, of course, 
his blindness saved him from the agony of 
apprehension which his companion suffered, 
for he could not see the narrowness of his 
escape. But I was out with him one day on 
the Upper Corniche road when two automo- 
biles going in opposite directions at reck- 
less speed came upon us at a sharp turn, 
and I may frankly confess that I was never 
so frightened in my life. Had we been 



JOSEPH PULITZER 91 

alone I am certain we would have been 
killed, but fortunately Mann was with us, 
and it was on his arm that J. P. was lean- 
ing at the critical moment. Mann, who had 
the advantage of long experience, acted in- 
stantly with the utmost presence of mind. 
He made a quick sign to me to look out for 
myself, and then pushed Mr. Pulitzer al- 
most off his feet up against the high cliff 
which rose above the inner edge of the road. 

The machines were out of sight before 
we could realize that we were safe. I ex- 
pected an explosion from J. P. Nothing of 
the kind! He acted then, as I always saw 
him act when there was any actual danger 
or real trouble of any kind, with perfect 
calmness and self-possession. 

The intolerable nervous strain of these 
walks on the hillside was accompanied by 
a mental strain almost as distressing. It 
would have been bad enough if one's only 
responsibility had been to keep Mr. Pulitzer 
from being crushed against the hillside, or 
being run over; but this was only half the 
problem. The other half was to keep up a 



92 JOSEPH PULITZER 

continual stream of conversation — not light, 
airy nothings, but a solid body of carefully 
prepared facts^ — in a tone of voice which 
should fail to convey to J. P. the slightest 
indication of your nervousness. 

When we walked on the plage at Men- 
tone, the difficulties were of another kind. 
Here there was always more or less of a 
crowd, and as the paved promenade was 
narrow, and as very few people had the in- 
telligence to realize that the tall, striking 
figure leaning on his companion's arm was 
that of a blind man, and as fewer still had 
the courtesy to step aside if they did realize 
it, our walk was a constant dodging in and 
out among curious gazers interested in star- 
ing at the gaunt, impressive invalid with 
the large black spectacles. 

Conversation was, of course, extremely 
difficult under such circumstances; and oc- 
casionally things were made worse by some 
stranger stopping squarely in front of us 
and addressing Mr. Pulitzer by name, for 
he was a notable personage in the place and 
was well known by sight. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 93 

When accosted in this manner, Mr. PuHt- 
zer always showed signs of extreme ner- 
vousness. He would stamp his foot, raise 
the clenched fist of his disengaged arm 
menacingly, and cry, "My God! What's 
this? What's this? Tell him to go away. 
I won't tolerate this intrusion. Tell him 111 
have him arrested." 

More than once I had to push a man off 
the promenade and make faces at him em- 
bodying all that was possible by such means 
in the way of threats to do him bodily in- 
jury. It was impossible to argue with these 
impudent intruders, because anything hke 
an altercation on a public road would have 
meant two or three days of misery for Mr. 
Puhtzer, in consequence of the excitement 
and apprehension he would suffer in such 
an affair. It was always with a feeling of 
intense rehef that I saw J. P. safely back 
at the villa after our walks. 

Although Mr. Pulitzer's intellectual in- 
terests covered almost every phase of human 
life, there was nothing from which he de- 
rived more pleasure than from music. Once, 



94 JOSEPH PULITZER 

or perhaps twice a week, he motored over 
to Monte Carlo, or even as far as Nice, to 
attend a concert. On such occasions he al- 
ways took at least two companions with him, 
so that he never sat next to a stranger. 

He preferred a box for his party, but, 
failing that, the seats were always secured 
on the broad cross-aisle, so that he w^ould not 
have to rise when anyone wished to pass in 
front of him. He liked to arrive a few 
minutes before the concert commenced, and 
one of us would read the program to him. 
He had an excellent memory for music, and 
his taste was broad enough to embrace al- 
most everything good from Bach to Wag- 
ner. He was a keen critic of a performance, 
and in the intervals between the pieces he 
criticized the playing from the standpoint 
of his musical experience. 

One movement was played too loud, an- 
other too fast; in one the brass had drowned 
a delightful passage for the violas, which 
he had heard and admired the year before 
in Vienna; in another the brasses had been 




JOSEPH PULITZER 
AT MONTE CARLO, IQII 



JOSEPH PULITZER 95 

subdued to a point where the theme lost its 
distinction. 

It was his habit to beat time with one 
hand and to sway his head gently backward 
and forward when he heard a slow, familiar 
melody. When something very stirring was 
played, the Rakoczy March, for instance, 
or the overture to Die Meister singer^ he 
would mark the down beat with his clenched 
fist, and throw his head back as if he were 
going to shout. 

I was tempted at first to believe that, in 
the concert room, when one of his favorite 
pieces was being played, and his hand rose 
and fell in exact accord with the conductor's 
baton, or when, with his head in the air and 
his mouth half open, he thumped his knee 
at the beginning of each bar, he was ab- 
sorbed in the music to the exclusion of all 
his worries, perplexities, and suffering. 

But, after he had once or twice turned to 
me in a flash as the last note of a symphony 
lingered before the outburst of applause and 
asked, "Did you remember to tell Dunning- 
ham to have dinner served a quarter of an 



96 JOSEPH PULITZER 

hour later this evening?" or "Did Thwaites 
say anything to you about when he expected 
those cables from New York?" — I learned 
that even at such times J. P. never lost the 
thread of his existence, never freed himself 
from the slavery of his affairs. 

Twice during the ten days immediately 
preceding our long promised cruise in the 
Mediterranean we made short trips on the 
yacht. We went to bed some nights with 
all our plans apparently settled for a week 
ahead. At eight o'clock the next morning 
Dunningham would bring J. P. down to 
breakfast and then announce that every- 
body was to be on board the yacht by mid- 
day, as J. P, had slept badly and felt 
the need of sea air and the complete quiet 
which could be had only on board the 
Liberty, 

There would be a great packing of 
trunks, not only those devoted to the per- 
sonal belongings of the staff, but trunks 
for newspaper files, encyclopedias, maga- 
zines, novels, histories, correspondence, and 
so on. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 97 

The chef and his assistants, the butler and 
his assistants, the major domo, and the sec- 
retaries would leave the villa in a string of 
♦carriages, followed by cartloads of baggage, 
and install themselves on the yacht. 

Or the cause of our sudden departure 
might be that Mr. Pulitzer was feeling 
nervous and out of sorts and was expecting 
important letters or cables which were sure 
to excite him and make him worse. On such 
occasions Dunningham, who was one of the 
few people who had any influence whatever 
over Mr. Pulitzer, would urge an instant 
flight on the yacht as the only means of 
safeguarding J. P.'s health. He knew that 
if we stayed ashore no power on earth could 
prevent Mr. Pulitzer from reading his 
cables and letters when they arrived. Once 
out at sea we were completely cut ofl" from 
communication with the shore, for we had 
no wireless apparatus, and Mr. Pulitzer 
would settle down and get some rest. 

More than once, however, I saw all the 
preparations made for a short cruise, every- 
body on board, the captain on the bridge. 



98 JOSEPH PULITZER 

the table laid for lunch, a man stationed at 
the stern to report the automobile as soon 
as it came in sight, and at the last moment 
a messenger arrive countermanding every- 
thing and ordering everybody back to the 
villa as fast as they could go. 

These sudden changes were sometimes re- 
versed. We would arrive at Mentone in the 
morning. J. P. would announce his inten- 
tion of spending a week there. With this 
apparently settled, J. P. goes ashore for a 
ride, the procession makes its way to the 
villa, the trunks are unpacked, the chef be- 
gins to ply his art, the captain of the yacht 
goes ahead with such washing down and 
painting as are needed, the chief engineer 
seizes the chance of making some small en- 
gine-room repairs — no ordinary ship's work 
of any kind was allowed when J. P. was on 
board, the slightest noise or the faintest odor 
of paint being strictly forbidden — and lai^er 
in the day the news comes that Mr. Pulitzer 
will be aboard again in two hours and will 
expect everything to be ready to make an 
immediate start. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 99 

These short cruises might last only for a 
night, or they might extend to a day or two. 
Our custom was to steam straight out to sea 
and then patrol the coast backward and 
forward between Bordighera and Cannes, 
without losing sight of land. 

The life at Cap Martin was sufficiently 
arduous, even for those who had after long 
experience with J. P. learned to get through 
the day with some economy of effort. To 
me, new to the work, constantly under the 
double pressure of Mr. Puhtzer's cross-ex- 
aminations and of the task of supplying, 
however inefficiently, the place of a secretary 
who was away on sick leave, the whole thing 
was a nightmare. I was in a dazed condi- 
tion; everything impressed itself upon me 
with the vividness of a dream, and eluded 
my attempts at analysis, just as the delusive 
order of our sleeping visions breaks up into 
topsyturvydom as soon as we try to recon- 
struct it in the light of day. 

I spent in all about a month at Cap Mar- 
tin, staying sometimes on the yacht and 
sometimes at an hotel, and during that time 



100 JOSEPH PULITZER 

I worked practically every day from eight 
in the morning until ten or eleven at night. 
I use the word "work" to include the hours 
spent with Mr. Pulitzer as well as those de- 
voted to preparing material for him. In- 
deed, the time given to meals and to drives 
and walks with J. P. was much more ex- 
hausting than that spent in reading and in 
making notes. 

The only recreation I had during this 
period was one day on leave at Nice and half 
a day at Monaco; but there was very little 
enjoyment to be got out of these visits, be- 
cause I was under orders to bring back mi- 
nute descriptions of Nice and of the Insti- 
tute of Marine Biology at Monaco. 

Engaged on such missions, the passers-by, 
the houses, the shops, the fishes and marine 
vegetables in their tanks, the blue sky over- 
head, the blue sea at my feet assumed a new 
aspect to me. They were no longer parts 
of my own observation, to be remembered 
or forgotten as chance determined, they be- 
longed to some one else, to the blind man in 



JOSEPH PULITZER 101 

whose service I was pledged to a vicarious 
absorption of "material." 

I found myself counting the black spots 
on a fish's back, the steps leading up to 
Monaco on its hill, the number of men and 
women in the Grand Salon at Monte Carlo, 
of men with mustaches, of clean-shaven men, 
of men with beards in the restaurants, of 
vessels in sight from the terrace, of every- 
thing, in fact, which seemed capable of fur- 
nishing a sentence or of starting up a dis- 
cussion. 

Once or twice I ran over late at night to 
Monte Carlo, and occasionally Thwaites 
and I met after ten o'clock at the Casino of 
Mentone to play bowls or try our luck at 
the tables ; but the spirit of J. P. never failed 
to attend upon these dismal efforts at amuse- 
ment. If I heard an epigram, witnessed 
an interesting incident, or observed any curi- 
ous sight, out came my note book and pencil 
and the matter was dedicated to the service 
of the morrow's duties. 

Finally, after several false starts, we all 



102 JOSEPH PULITZER 

found ourselves on the yacht with the pros- 
pect of spending most of our time aboard 
until Mr. Pulitzer sailed for his annual visit 
to America. 



CHAPTER lY 

Yachting in the Mediteeeanean 

TAKEN at its face value a month in 
the Mediterranean, on board one of 
the finest yachts afloat, with visits to Corsica, 
Elba, Nice, Cannes, Naples, Genoa, Syra- 
cuse, and the Pirgeus, should give promise 
of a picturesque and entertaining record of 
sight-seeing, the kind of journal in which 
the views of Baedeker and of your local cab 
driver are blended, in order that the aroma 
of foreign travel may be wafted to the nos- 
trils of your fresh- water cousins. 

What my narrative lacks of this flavor 
of luxurious vagrancy must be supplied by 
the peculiar interest of a cruise which vio- 
lated every tradition of the annals of yacht- 
ing, and created precedents which in all hu- 
108 



104 JOSEPH PULITZER 

man probability will never be followed so 
long as iron floats on water. 

It was part of Mr. Pulitzer's scheme of 
nautical life to shroud all his movements in 
mystery. One result of this was that when 
we were on the yacht we never knew where 
we were going until we got there. The 
compass-course at any moment betrayed 
nothing of Mr, Pulitzer's intentions, for 
we might turn in at night with the ship head- 
ing straight for Naples and wake up in the 
morning to find ourselves three miles south 
of the Genoa lighthouse. 

Apart from Mr. Pulitzer's fancy, our er- 
ratic maneuvers were affected by our need 
to make good weather out of whatever wind 
we encountered, on the one hand because 
J. P., though an excellent sailor, disliked the 
rolling produced by a beam sea, since it in- 
terfered with his walking on deck, and on 
the other hand, because several of the secre- 
taries suffered from sea-sickness the mo- 
ment we were off an even keel. 

Mr. Pulitzer was not a man prone to be 
placated by excuses; but he had come to 




JOSEPH PULITZER AND ONE OF HIS SECRETARIES 
ON THE DECK OF THE " LIBERTY " 



JOSEPH PULITZER 105 

realize that neither a sense of duty nor the 
hope of reward, neither fear nor courage, 
can make an agreeable companion out of a 
man who is seasick. So, unless there was an 
important reason why we should reach port, 
we always made a head-^vind of anything 
stronger than a light breeze, and followed 
the M^eather round the compass until it was 
fair for our destinatioUo 

As soon as we left Mentone Mr. Pulitzer 
began the process of education which was 
designed to fit me for his service. 

"When you were in New York," he asked, 
"what papers did you read?" 

''The Sun and The Times in the morning 
and The Evening Sun and The Evening 
Post at night," I replied. 

"My God ! Didn't you read The WorUr 
"Nothing but the editorial page." 
"Why not? What's the matter with it?" 
I explained that I was not interested in 
crime and disaster, to which The World de- 
voted so much space, that I wanted more 
foreign news than The World found room 
for, and that I was offended by the big 



106 JOSEPH PULITZER 

headlines, which compelled me to know 
things I didn't want to know. 

"Go on," he said; "your views are not of 
any importance, but they're entertaining." 

"Well," I continued, "I think The World 
was excellently described a few years ago 
in LifCo There was a poem entitled, *New 
York Newspaper Directory, Revised,' in 
which a verse was devoted to each of the big 
New York papers. I believe I can remem- 
ber the one about The World, if you care 
to hear it, for I cut the poem out and have 
kept it among my clippings." 

"Certainly, go ahead." 

I recited: 

"A dual personality is this, 
Part yellow dog, part patriot and sage ; 
When ^t comes to facts the rule is hit or miss, 
While none can beat its editorial page. 
Wise counsel here, wild yarns the other side, 
Page six its JekyU and page one its Hyde; 
At the same time conservative and rash, 
The World supplies us good advice and trash.'* 

"That's clever," said Mr. Pulitzer, "but 
it's absolute nonsense, except about the edi- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 107 

torial page. Have you got the clipping 
with you? I would like to hear what that 
smart young man has got to say about the 
other papers." 

I went to my cabin, got the poem, and 
read the whole of it to him — ^witty charac- 
terizations of The Evening Post, The Sun, 
The Journal, The Tribune, The Times and 
The Herald, As soon as I had finished 
reading, Mr. Pulitzer said: 

"The man who wrote those verses had his 
prejudices, but he was clever. I'm glad you 
read them to me; always read me anything 
of that kind, anything that is bright and 
satirical. Now, I'm going to give you a 
lecture about newspapers, because I want 
you to understand my point of view. It 
does not matter whether you agree with it 
or not, but you have got to understand it if 
you are going to be of any use to me. But 
before I begin, you tell me what your 
ideas are about running a newspaper for 
American readers." 

I pleaded that I had never given the mat- 
ter much thought, and that I had little to 



108 JOSEPH PULITZER 

guide me, except my own preferences and 
the memory of an occasional discussion here 
and there at a club or in the smoking room 
of a Pullman. He insisted, however, and 
so I launched forth upon a discourse in re- 
gard to the functions, duties and responsi- 
bilities of an American newspaper, as I im- 
agined they would appear to the average 
American reader^ 

The chief duty of a managing editor, I 
said, was to give his readers an interesting 
paper, and as an angler baits his hook, not 
with what he likes, but with what the fish 
like, so the style of the newspaper should 
be adjusted to what the managing editor 
judged to be the public appetite. 

A sub-stratum of truth should run 
through the news columns; but since a mil- 
lion-dollar fire is more exciting than a half- 
million-dollar fire, since a thousand deaths 
in an earthquake are more exciting than a 
hundred, no nice scrupulosity need be ob- 
served in checking the insurance inspector's 
figures or in counting the dead. What the 
public wanted was a good "story," and pro- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 109 

vided it got that there would be little dispo- 
sition in any quarter to censure an arithmet- 
ical generosity which had been invoked in the 
service of the public's well-known demands. 

So far as politics were concerned, it 
seemed to me that any newspaper could af- 
ford the strongest support to its views while 
printing the truth and nothing but the truth, 
if it exercised some discretion as to print- 
ing the whole truth. The editorial, I 
added, might be regarded as a habit rather 
than as a guiding force. People no longer 
looked to the editorial columns for the for- 
mation of their opinions. They formed 
their judgment from a large stock of facts, 
near- facts and nowhere near- facts, and then 
bought a paper for the purpose of comfort- 
able reassurance. I had no doubt that a 
newspaper run to suit my own taste — a com- 
bination of The World's editorial page with 
The Evening Posfs news and make-up — 
would lack the influence with which circula- 
tion alone can endow a paper, and would end 
in a bankruptcy highly creditable to its 
stockholders. 



110 JOSEPH PULITZER 

This somewhat cynical outburst brought 
down upon me an overwhelming torrent of 
protest from Mr. Pulitzer. 

"My God!" he cried, "I would not have 
believed it possible that any one could show 
such a complete ignorance of American 
character, of the high sense of duty which 
in the main animates American journalism, 
of the foundations of integrity on which al- 
most every successful paper in the United 
States has been founded. You do not know 
what it costs me to try and keep The World 
up to a high standard of accuracy — the 
money, the time, the thought, the praise, the 
blame, the constant watchfulness. 

"I do not say that The World never makes 
a mistake in its news column ; I wish I could 
say it. What I say is that there are not half 
a dozen papers in the United States which 
tamper with the news, which publish what 
they know to be false. But if I thought 
that I had done no better than that I would 
be ashamed to own a paper. It is not 
enough to refrain from publishing fake 
news, it is not enough to take ordinary care 



JOSEPH PULITZER 111 

to avoid the mistakes which arise from the 
ignorance, the carelessness, the stupidity of 
one or more of the many men who handle 
the news before it gets into print ; you have 
got to do much more than that; you have 
got to make every one connected with the 
paper — your editors, your rejDorters, your 
correspondents, your rewrite men, your 
proof-readers — believe that accuracy is to a 
newspaper what virtue is to a woman. 

"When you go to New York ask any of 
the men in the dome to show you my instruc- 
tions to them, my letters written from day 
to day, my cables ; and you will see that ac- 
curacy, accuracy, accuracy, is the first, the 
most urgent, the most constant demand I 
have made on them. 

"I do not say that The World is the only 
paper which takes extraordinary pains to 
be accurate; on the contrary, I think that 
almost every paper in America tries to be 
accurate. I will go further than that. 
There is not a paper of any importance pub- 
lished in French, German or Enghsh, 
whether it is printed in Europe or in Amer- 



112 JOSEPH PULITZER 

ica, which I have not studied for weeks or 
months, and some of them I have read 
steadily for a quarter of a century; and I 
tell you this, Mr. Ireland, after years of 
experience, after having comparisons made 
by the hundred, from time to time, of dif- 
ferent versions of the same event, that the 
press of America as a whole has a higher 
standard of accuracy than the European 
press as a whole. I will go further than 
that. I will say that line for line the Ameri- 
can newspapers actually attain a higher 
standard of news accuracy than the Euro- 
pean newspapers ; and I will go further than 
that and say that although there are in 
Europe a few newspapers, and they are 
chiefly English, which are as accurate as the 
best newspapers in America, there are no 
newspapers in America which are so ha- 
bitually, so criminally stuffed mth fake 
news as the worst of the European papers." 
Mr. Pulitzer paused and asked me if 
there was a glass of water on the table — ^we 
were seated in his library — and after I had 
handed it to him and he had drained it nearly 



JOSEPH PULITZER 113 

to the bottom at one gulp, he resumed his 
lecture, I give it in considerable detail, be- 
cause it was the longest speech he ever ad- 
dressed to me, because he subsequently made 
me write it out from memory and then read 
it to him, and because it was one of the few 
occasions during my intercourse with him on 
which I was persuaded beyond a doubt that 
he spoke with perfect frankness, without 
allowing his words to be influenced by any 
outside considerations. 

"As a matter of fact," He continued, "the 
criticisms you hear about the American press 
are founded on a dislike for our headlines 
and for the prominence we give to crime, to 
corruption in office, and to sensational topics 
generally; the charge of inaccuracy is just 
thrown in to make it look worse. I do not 
believe that one person in a thousand who 
attacks the American press for being inac- 
curate has ever taken the trouble to investi- 
gate the facts. 

"Now about this matter of sensational- 
ism : a newspaper should be scrupulously ac- 
curate, it should be clean, it should avoid 



114 JOSEPH PULITZER 

everything salacious or suggestive, every- 
thing that could offend good taste or lower 
the moral tone of its readers; but within 
these limits it is the duty of a newspaper to 
print the newSo When I speak of good 
taste and of good moral tone I do not mean 
the kind of good taste which is offended by 
every reference to the unpleasant things of 
life, I do not mean the kind of morality 
which refuses to recognize the existence of 
immorality — that type of moral hypocrite 
has done more to check the moral progress 
of humanity than all the immoral people put 
together — what I mean is the kind of good 
taste which demands that frankness should 
be linked with decency, the kind of moral 
tone which is braced and not relaxed when 
it is brought face to face with vice. 

"Some people try and make you believe 
that a newspaper should not devote its space 
to long and dramatic accounts of murders, 
railroad wrecks, fires, lynchings, political 
corruption, embezzlements, frauds, graft, 
divorces, what you will. I tell you they are 
wrong, and I believe that if they thought 



JOSEPH PULITZER 115 

the thing out they would see that they are 
wrong, 

"We are a democracy, and there is only 
one way to get a democracy on its feet in 
the matter of its individual, its social, its 
municipal, its State, its National conduct, 
and that is by keeping the public informed 
about what is going on. There is not a 
crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a 
trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a 
vice which does not live by secrecy. Get 
these things out in the open, describe them, 
attack them, ridicule them in the press, and 
soone» or later public opinion will sweep 
them away, 

"Publicity may not be the only thing that 
is needed, but it is the one thing without 
which all other agencies will fail. If a news- 
paper is to be of real service to the public 
it must have a big circulation, first because 
its news and its comment must reach the 
largest possible number of people, second, 
because circulation means advertising, and 
advertising means money, and money means 
independence. If I caught any man on The 



116 JOSEPH PULITZER 

World suppressing news because one of our 
advertisers objected to having it printed I 
would dismiss him immediately; I wouldn't 
care who he was. 

"What a newspaper needs in its news, in 
its headlines, and on its editorial page is 
terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, 
originality, good literary style, clever con- 
densation, and accuracy, accuracy, accu- 
racy!" 

Mr. Pulitzer made this confession of faith 
with the warmth generated by an unshaka- 
ble faith. He spoke, as he always spoke 
when he was excited, with vigor, emphasis 
and ample gesture. When he came to an 
end and asked for another glass of water I 
found nothing to say. It would have been 
as impertinent of me to agree with him as to 
differ from him. 

After all, I had to remember that he had 
taken over The World when its circulation 
was less than 15,000 copies a day; that he 
had been for thirty years and still was its 
dominating spirit and the final authority on 
every matter concerning its policy, its style. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 117 

and its contents ; that he had seen its morn- 
ing circulation go up to well over 350,000 
copies a day ; that at times he had taken his 
stand holdly against popular clamor, as 
when he kept up for months a bitter attack 
against the American action in the Venezue- 
lan boundary dispute, and at times had in- 
curred the hostihty of powerful moneyed in- 
terests, as when he forced the Cleveland ad- 
ministration to sell to the public on com- 
petitive bids a fifty-million-dollar bond is- 
sue which it had arranged to sell privately 
to a great banking house at much less than 
its market value. 

Before leaving the subject of newspapers 
I may describe the method by which Mr. 
Pulitzer kept in touch with the news and put 
himself in the position to maintain a critical 
supervision over The World. 

An elaborate organization was employed 
for this purpose. I will explain it as it 
worked when wx were on the yacht, but the 
system was maintained at all times, whether 
we were cruising, or were at Cap Martin, at 
Bar Harbor, at Wiesbaden, or elsewhere, 



118 JOSEPH PULITZER 

merely a few minor details being cKanged 
to meet local conditions. 

In the Pulitzer Building, Park Row, New 
York, there were collected each day several 
copies of each of the morning papers, in- 
cluding The Worlds and some of the even- 
ing papers. These were mailed daily to Mr. 
Pulitzer according to cabled instructions as 
to our whereabouts. In addition to this a 
gentleman connected with The World, who 
had long experience of Mr. Pulitzer's re- 
quirements, cut from all the New York 
papers and from a number of other papers 
from every part of the United States every 
article that he considered Mr. Pulitzer ought 
to see, whether because of its subject, its 
tenor, or its style. These cUppings were 
mailed by the hundred on almost every fast 
steamer sailing for Europe. In order that 
there might be the greatest economy of time 
in reading them, the essential matter in each 
clipping was marked. 

So far as The World was concerned a 
copy of each issue was sent, with the names 



JOSEPH PULITZER 119 

of the writers written across each editorial, 
big news story, or special article. 

As we went from port to port we got the 
principal French, German, Austrian and 
ItaUan papers, and The World bureau in 
London kept us supplied with the Enghsh 
dailies and weekhes. 

Whenever we picked up a batch of Amer- 
ican papers, each of the secretaries got a set 
and immediately began to read it. My own 
method of reading was adopted after much 
advice from Mr. Pulitzer and after consul- 
tation with the more experienced members 
of the staff, and I do not suppose it dif- 
fered materially from that followed by the 
others. 

I read The World first, going over the 
"big" stories carefully and with enough con- 
centration to give me a very fair idea of the 
facts. Then I read the articles in the other 
papers covering the same ground, noting 
any important differences in the various ac- 
counts. This task resolved itself in practice 
into mastering in considerable detail about 
half a dozen articles — a pohtical situation, a 



120 JOSEPH PULITZER 

murder, a railroad wreck, a fire, a strike, an 
important address by a college president, for 
example — and getting a clear impression of 
the treatment of each item in each paper. 

With this done, and with a few notes 
scribbled on a card to help my memory, I 
turned to the editorial pages, reading each 
editorial with the closest attention, and mak- 
ing more notes. 

The final reading of the news served to 
give me from ten to twenty small topics of 
what Mr. Pulitzer called "human interest," 
to be used as subjects of conversation as oc- 
casion demanded. As a rule, I cut these 
items out of the paper and put them in the 
left-hand pocket of my coat, for when we 
walked together J. P. always took my right 
arm, and my left hand was therefore free to 
dip into my reservoir of cuttings whenever 
conversation flagged and I needed a new 
subject. 

The cuttings covered every imaginable 
topic — small cases in the magistrates' courts, 
eccentric entertainments at Newport, the 
deaths of centenarians, dinners to visiting 



JOSEPH PULITZER 121 

authors in New York, accounts of perform- 
ing animals, infant prodigies, new inven- 
tions, additions to the Metropolitan Mu- 
seum, announcements of new plays, anec- 
dotes about prominent men and women, in- 
stances of foolish extravagance among the 
rich, and so on. 

Something of the kind was done by each 
of us, so that when Mr. Pulitzer appeared 
on deck after breakfast we all had something 
ready for him. The first man called usually 
had the easiest time, for Mr. Pulitzer's 
mind was fresh and keen for news after a 
night's rest. The men who went to him later 
in the morning suffered from two disad- 
vantages, one that they did not know w^hat 
news or how much of it J. P. had already 
received, the other that as the day advanced 
Mr. Pulitzer often grew tired, and his at- 
tention then became difficult to hold. 

I remember that on one occasion when he 
had complained of feeling utterly tired out 
mentally I asked him if he would like me 
to stop talking. "No, no," he replied at 
once; "never stop talking or reading, I 



122 JOSEPH PULITZER 

must have something to occupy my mind all 
the time, however exhausted I am." 

This peculiarity of being unable to get 
any repose by the road of silent abstraction 
must have been a source of acute suffering 
to him. It is difficult to imagine a more ter- 
rible condition of mind than that in which 
the constant flogging of a tired brain is the 
only anodyne for its morbid irritability. 

My own experience of a morning on the 
yacht, when Mr. Pulitzer's nerves had been 
soothed by a good night's sleep, was that he 
walked up and down the long promenade 
deck and got from me a brief summary of 
the news. 

From time to time he pulled out his watch 
and, holding it toward me, asked what 
o'clock it was. He was always most particu- 
lar to know exactly how long he had walked. 
We had arguments on many occasions as to 
the exact moment at which we had com- 
menced our promenade, and we would go 
carefully over the facts — Mr. Craven had 
been walking with him from 9.30 to 10.05, 
then Dunningham had been in the library 



JOSEPH PULITZER 123 

with him for fifteen minutes, then Mr. 
Thwaites had walked with him for ten min- 
utes, taking notes for a letter to be written 
to the managing editor of The World; 
well, that made it 10.30 when I joined him; 
but fifteen minutes had to be taken out of 
the hour for the time he'd spent in the H- 
brary, that made three-quarters of an hour 
he'd been actually walking, well, we'd walk 
for another fifteen minutes and round out 
the hour. 

Often when the appointed moment came 
to stop walking Mr. Pulitzer felt able to go 
on, and he would then either say frankly, 
"Let's have fifteen minutes more^" or 
he would achieve the same end by reopening 
the discussion as to just how long he had 
walked, and keep on walking until he began 
to feel tired, when he would say: "I dare say 
you are quite right, well, now we will sit 
down and go over the papers." 

The question of where Mr. Pulitzer was 
to sit on deck was not a simple one to de- 
cide. He always wanted as much air as he 
could get; but as he suffered a good deal of 



124. JOSEPH PULITZER 

pain in his right eye, the one which had been 
operated on, and as this was either started 
or made worse by exposure to wind, a spot 
had to be found which had just the right 
amount of air current. Five minutes might 
show, however, that there was a little too 
much wind, when we would move to a more 
sheltered spot, or he might think we'd been 
too cautious and that he could sit in a breez- 
ier spot, or, after we had found the ideal 
place, the wind might change, and then we 
had to move again. 

Settled in a large cane armchair with a 
leather seat, a heavy rug over his knees if the 
weather was at all chilly, Mr. PuUtzer took 
up the serious consideration of the news 
which had been lightly skimmed over during 
his walk. 

An item was selected, and the account in 
The World was read aloud. Then followed 
the discussion of it from the standpoint of 
its presentation in the various papers. On 
what page was it printed in The World, in 
what column, how much space did it fill, how 
much was devoted to headlines, what was the 




JOSEPH PULITZER 

LISTENING TO THE MORNING's NEWS 

ON THE " LIBERTY " 



JOSEPH PULITZER 125 

size of the type, was the type varied in parts 
to give emphasis to the more striking fea- 
tures of the story, what were the cross-heads 
in the body of the article, were any boxes 
used, if so, what was put in them, what 
about the illustrations? And so on for each 
important item in each paper. 

One of the by-products of this reading of 
the papers was a stream of cables, letters and 
memoranda to various members of The 
World staff in New York. None of these 
were ever sent through me, but it was a com- 
mon thing for J. P. to say: "Have you got 
your writing pad with you? Just make a 
note: Indianapolis story excellent, insuf- 
ficient details lynching, who wrote City Hall 
story? and give it to Thwaites and tell him 
to remind me of it this afternoon." 

Mr. Pulitzer would take the matter up 
with Thwaites, and would send such praise, 
blame, reward, criticism, or suggestion as 
the occasion demanded. 

From time to time I was called upon to 
make a report on the day's papers, a task 
which usually fell to some more experienced 



126 JOSEPH PULITZER 

member of the staff. My reports always 
covered the Sunday issues. They included 
an analysis of The Sun, The Herald, The 
American, The Times, The Tribune and 
The World, showing the number of columns 
of advertising, of news, and of special arti- 
cles, a classification of the telegrams accord- 
ing to geographical distribution — ^how much 
from France, from Germany, from Eng- 
land, from the Western States, from the 
Southern States, and so on; a classification 
of the special articles on the basis of their 
topics — ^medicine, sport, fashions, humor, ad- 
venture, children's interests, women's inter- 
ests. 

This was by no means the only check 
which Mr, Pulitzer kept upon The World 
and its contemporaries. He received regu- 
larly from New York a statistical return 
showing, for The World and its two princi- 
pal competitors, the monthly and yearly fig- 
ures for circulation and advertising ; and the 
advertising return showed not only the 
amount of space occupied by advertising in 
each paper, but also the number of adver- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 127 

tisements each month under various heads, 
such as display advertising, want ads., real 
estate, dry goods, amusements, hotels, trans- 
portation, to let ads., summer resorts, and 
whatever other classes of advertising might 
appear. 

Whatever Mr. Pulitzer wished to do in 
the way of business, whether it concerned the 
direction of the policy of The World, or the 
dictating of an editorial, or the handling of 
correspondence, was almost always done in 
the morning, and by lunch time he was ready 
to turn his attention to something light or 
amusing, or to serious subjects not con- 
nected with current events. 

Mr. Pulitzer generally lunched and dined 
with the staff in the dining saloon, unless he 
felt more than usually ill or nervous, when 
he had his meals served in the library, one 
or at most two of us keeping him company. 

When he sat with us he occupied the head 
of the table. At his side stood the butler, 
who never attended to any one but his mas- 
ter. A stranger at the table, if he were not 
actually sitting next to J. P., might very 



128 JOSEPH PULITZER 

well have failed to notice that his host was 
blind, so far as any indication of blindness 
was afforded by the way he ate. His food 
was, of course, cut up at a side table, but it 
was placed before him on an ordinary plate, 
without any raised edge or other device to 
save it from being pushed on to the table- 
cloth. 

As soon as he was seated J. P. put his 
fingers lightly on the table in front of him 
and fixed the exact position of his plate, 
fork, spoon, water glass and vidne glass. 
While he was doing this he generally spoke 
a few words to one or another of us, and as 
he always turned his face in the direction of 
the person he was addressing, the delicate 
movements of his hands, even if they were 
observed, were only those of a man with his 
sight under similar circumstances. 

Sitting next to him, however, his bhnd- 
ness soon became apparent. As he began to 
eat he simply impaled each portion of food 
on his fork, but after he had got halfway 
through a course and the remaining morsels 
were scattered here and there on his plate. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 129 

he explored the surface with the utmost nice- 
ness of touch until he felt a shght resistance. 
He had then located a morsel, but in order 
that he might avoid an accident in transfer- 
ring it to his mouth he felt the object care- 
fully all over with almost imperceptible 
touches of his fork, and, having found the 
thickest or firmest part of it secured it 
safely. 

At times, if he became particularly inter- 
ested in the conversation, he put his fork 
down, and when he picked it up again he was 
in difficulties for a moment or two, having 
lost track of the food remaining on his plate. 
On these occasions the ever-watchful butler 
would either place the food ^\dth a fork in 
the track of J. P.'s systematic exploration, 
or guide Mr. Pulitzer's hand to the right 
spot. 

Like many people in broken health ]Mr. 
Pulitzer had a very variable appetite. Some- 
times nothing could tempt his palate, some- 
times he ate voraciously ; but at all times the 
greatest care had to be exercised in regard 
to his diet. Not only did he suffer con- 



130 JOSEPH PULITZER 

stantly from acute dyspepsia, but also from 
diabetes, which varied in sympathy with his 
general state of health. 

He took very little alcohol, and that only 
in the form of light wines, such as claret or 
hock, seldom more than a single small glass 
at lunch and at dinner. Whenever he found 
a vintage which specially appealed to him 
he would tell the butler to send a case or 
two to some old friend in America, to some 
member of his family or to one of the staff 
of The World, 

After lunch Mr. Pulitzer always retired 
to his cabin for a siesta. I use the word 
siesta, but as a matter of fact it is quite in- 
adequate to describe the peculiar function 
for which I have chosen it as a label. What 
took place on these occasions was this : Mr. 
Pulitzer lay down on his bed, sometimes in 
pyjamas, but more often with only his coat 
and boots removed, and one of the secre- 
taries, usually the German secretary, sat 
down in an armchair at the bedside with a 
pile of books at his elbow. 

At a word from Mr. Pulitzer the secre- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 131 

taiy began to read in a clear, incisive voice 
some historical work, novel or play. After 
a few minutes Mr. Pulitzer would say 
"Softly," and the secretary's voice was low- 
ered until, though it was still audible, it as- 
sumed a monotonous and soothing quality. 
After a while the order came, "Quite softly." 
At this point the reader ceased to form his 
words and commenced to murmur indis- 
tinctly, giving an effect such as might be 
produced by a person reading aloud in an 
adjoining room, but with the connecting 
door closed. 

If, after ten minutes of this murmuring, 
J. P. remained motionless it was to be as- 
sumed that he was asleep; and the secre- 
tary's duty was to go on murmuring until 
Mr. Pulitzer awoke and told him to stop or 
to commence actual reading again. This 
murmuring might last for two hours, and 
it was a very difficult art to acquire, for at 
the slightest change in the pitch of the voice, 
at a sneeze, or a cough, Mr. Puhtzer would 
wake with a start, and an unpleasant quar- 
ter of an hour followed. 



132 JOSEPH PULITZER 

This murmuring was not, however, with- 
out its consolations to the murmurer, for as 
soon as the actual reading stopped he could 
take up a novel or magazine and, leaving his 
vocal organs to carry on the work, concen- 
trate his mind upon the preparation of ma- 
terial against some future session. 

The siesta over, the afternoon was taken 
up with much the same kind of work as had 
filled the morning. By six o'clock Mr. 
Pulitzer was ready to sit in the library for 
an hour before he dressed for dinner. This 
time was generally devoted to novels, plays 
and light literature of various kinds. J. P. 
often assured me that no man had ever been 
able to read a novel or a play to him satisfac- 
torily without having first gone over it care- 
fully at least twice; and on more than one 
occasion I was furnished with very good evi- 
dence that even this double preparation w^as 
not always a guarantee of success. 

There appeared to be two ways of getting 
Mr. Pulitzer interested in a novel or play. 
One, and this, I believe, was the most suc- 
cessful, was to draw a striking picture of 



JOSEPH PULITZER 133 

the scene where the chmax is reached — the 
wife crouching in the corner, the husband 
revolver in hand, the Tertium Quid cahnly 
offering to read the documents which prove 
that he and not the gentleman with the re- 
volver is really the husband of the lady — and 
then to go back to the beginning and explain 
how it all came about. 

The other method was to set forth the ap- 
pearance and disposition of each of the 
characters in the story, so that they assumed 
reality in Mr. Pulitzer's mind, then to con- 
dense the narrative up to about page two 
hundred and sixty, and then begin to read 
from the book. If in the course of the next 
three minutes you were not asked in a tone 
of utter weariness, "My God! Is there 
much more of this?" there was a reasonable 
chance that you might be allowed to read 
from the print a fifth or possibly a fourth 
of what you had not summarized. 

Dinner on the yacht passed in much the 
same way as lunch, except that serious sub- 
jects and especially politics were taboo. 

The meal hours were really the most try- 



134 JOSEPH PULITZER 

ing experiences of the day. Each of us went 
to the table with several topics of conversa- 
tion carefully prepared, with our pockets 
full of newspaper cuttings, notes and even 
small reference books for dates and biog- 
raphies. 

But there was seldom any conversation in 
the proper sense; that is to say, we were 
hardly ever able to start a subject going and 
pass it from one to the other with a running 
comment or amplification, partly because 
any expression of opinion, except when he, 
J. P., asked for it, usually bored him to ex- 
tinction, and partly because the first state- 
ment of any striking fact generally inspired 
Mr. Pulitzer to undertake a searching cross- 
examination of the speaker into every detail 
of the matter brought forward, and in re- 
gard to every ramification of the subject. 

I may relate an amusing instance of this ; 
A gentleman who had been on the staff, but 
had been absent through illness, joined us at 
Mentone for a cruise in the Eastern Medi- 
terranean. At dinner the first night out he 
incautiously mentioned that during the two 



JOSEPH PULITZER 135 

months of his convalescence he had taken the 
opportunity of reading the whole of Shake- 
speare's plays. 

Too late he reahzed his mistake. Mr. 
Pulitzer took the matter up, and for the next 
hour and a half we listened to the unfor- 
tunate ex-invalid while he gave a list of the 
principal characters in each of the historical 
plays, in each of the tragedies, and in each 
of the comedies, followed by an outline of 
each plot, a description of a scene here and 
there, and an occasional quotation from the 
text. 

At the end of this heroic exploit, which 
was helped out now and then by a note from 
one of the rest of us, scribbled hastily on a 
card and handed silently to the victim, Mr. 
Pulitzer merely said, "Well, go on, go on, 
didn't you read the sonnets?" But this was 
too much for our gravity, and in a ripple 
of laughter the sitting was brought to a 
close. 

The trouble with the meals, however, was 
not only that we were all kept at a very high 
strain of alertness and attention, singularly 



136 JOSEPH PULITZER 

inconducive to the enjoyment of food or to 
the sober business of digestion, but that 
they were of such interminable length. The 
plain fact was that by utilizing almost every 
moment between eight o'clock in the morn- 
ing and nine o'clock at night we could for- 
tify ourselves with enough material to fill 
in the hour or two spent with Mr. Pulitzer, 
hours during which we had to supply an in- 
cessant stream of information, or run 
through a carefully condensed novel or play. 

Under such circumstances an hour for 
lunch or dinner had to be accepted as an un- 
fortunate necessity; but when it came, as it 
often did, to an hour and a half or two hours, 
the encroachment on our time became a seri- 
ous matter. 

At about nine o'clock Mr. Pulitzer went 
to the library. One of the secretaries accom- 
panied him and read aloud until, on the 
stroke of ten, Dunningham came and an- 
nounced that it was bedtime. 

An extraordinary, and in some respects a 
most annoying feature of this final task of 
the day, viewed from the secretary's stand- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 137 

point, was that from nine to ten, almost with- 
out cessation, Mr. Mann, the German sec- 
retary, played the piano in the dining sa- 
loon, the doors communicating with the li- 
brary being left open. 

In a direct line the piano cannot have been 
more than ten feet from the reader's chair; 
and the strain of reading aloud for an hour 
against a powerful rendering of the most 
vigorous compositions of Liszt, Wagner, 
Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin was a most 
trying ordeal for voice, brain and nerves. 
Mr. Pulitzer could apparently enjoy the 
music and the reading at the same time. 
Often, when something was played of which 
he knew the air, he would follow the notes 
by means of a sort of subdued whistle, beat- 
ing time with his hand ; but this did not take 
his mind off the reading, and if you allowed 
your attention to wander for a moment and 
failed to read with proper emphasis he would 
say: "Please read that last passage over 
again, and do try and read it distinctly." 

Such was the routine of life on the yacht. 
It was little affected by our occasional visits 



138 JOSEPH PULITZER 

to Naples, Ajaccio and other ports. Some 
one always landed to inquire for mail and to 
procure newspapers, one or two of us got 
shore leave for a few hours, but so far as I 
was concerned, being still in strict training 
and under close observation, my rare land- 
ings were made only for the purpose of hav- 
ing my observation and memory tested. 

I brought back minute descriptions of 
Napoleon's birthplace at Ajaccio, of his 
villa in Elba, of the tapestries, pictures and 
statues in the National Museum at Naples, 
of the Acropolis, of the monument of Lysi- 
crates, of the Greek Theater and of the Ro- 
man Amphitheater at Syracuse, and of 
whatever else I was directed to observe. 

Mr. Pulitzer had had these things de- 
scribed to him a score of times. He knew 
which block of seats in the Greek theater 
at Neapolis bore the inscription of Nereis, 
daughter-in-law of King Heiro the Second ; 
he knew up what stairs and through what 
rooms and passages you had to go to see 
the marble bath in Napoleon's villa near 
Portof erraio ; he knew from precisely what 



JOSEPH PULITZER 139 

part of the Acropolis the yacht was visible 
when it was at anchor at the Pirgeus ; he knew 
the actual place of the more important pic- 
tures on the walls of each room of the Naples 
Museum — such a one to the right, such a one 
to the left as you entered — ^he knew practi- 
cally everything, but specially he knew the 
thing you had forgotten. 

My exhibitions of memory always ended, 
as they were no doubt intended to end, in a 
confession of ignorance. If I described five 
pictures, Mr. Pulitzer said: "Go on"; when 
I had described ten, he said: "Go on"; when 
I had described fifteen he said: "Go on"; 
and this was kept up until I could go on no 
more. At this point Mr. Pulitzer had dis- 
covered just what he wanted to know — how 
much I could see in a given time, and how 
much of it I could remember with a fair de- 
gree of accuracy. It was simply the game 
of the jewels which Lurgan Sahib played 
with Kim, against a different background 
but with much the same object. 

In the foregoing description of Mr. 
Pulitzer's daily life it has been made abun- 



140 JOSEPH PULITZER 

dantly clear that his secretaries were worked 
to the limit of their endurance. It remains 
to add that Mr. Pulitzer never made a de- 
mand upon us which was greater than the 
demand he made upon himself. 

He was a tremendous worker; and in re- 
ceiving our reports no vital fact ever es- 
caped him. If we missed one he imme- 
diately "sensed" it, and his untiring cross- 
examination clung to the trail imtil he un- 
earthed it. 

We had youth, health and numbers on our 
side, yet this man, aged by suffering, tor- 
mented by ill-health, loaded with responsi- 
bility, kept pace with our united labors, and 
in the final analysis gave more than he re- 
ceived. 

We brought a thousand offerings to his 
judgment; many of them he rejected with 
an impatient cry of ''ISText! Next! For 
God's sake!" But if any subject, whether 
from its intrinsic importance or from its 
style, reached the standard of his discrimi- 
nation he took it up, enlarged upon it, il- 
luminated it, until what had come to him as 



JOSEPH PULITZER 141 

crude material for conversation assumed a 
new form, everything unessential rejected, 
everything essential disclosed in the clear 
and vigorous English which was the vehicle 
of his lucid thought. 

When I recall the capaciousness of his un- 
derstanding, the breadth of his experience, 
the range of his information, and set them 
side by side with the cruel limitations im- 
posed upon him by his blindness and by his 
shattered constitution, I forget the severity 
of his discipline, I marvel only that his self- 
control should have served him so well in 
the tedious business of breaking a new man 
to his service. 



CHAPTER V 

Getting to Know Mr. Pulitzer 

AS time passed, my relations with Mr. 
Pulitzer became more agreeable. He 
had given me fair warning that the first few 
weeks of my trial would be more or less mi- 
pleasant; a month at Cap Martin and a 
month on the yacht had amply verified his 
prediction. 

But this period of probation, laborious 
and nerve-racking as it was, enabled me to 
appreciate how important it was for J. P. 
to put to a severe test of ability, tact and 
good temper any one whom he intended to 
attach to his personal staff. 

His total blindness placed him completely 
in the hands of those around him, and, in 
order that he might enjoy that sense of per- 
fect security without which his life would 
142 



JOSEPH PULITZER 143 

have been intolerable, it was necessary that 
he should be able to repose absolute confi- 
dence in the loyalty and intelligence of his 
companions. 

It was not with reference to his blindness 
alone that the qualifications of his secretaries 
were measured. Indeed, to the loss of his 
sight he had become, in some measure, rec- 
onciled; what really dominated every other 
consideration was the need of being able to 
meet the peculiar conditions which had arisen 
through the complete breakdown of his nerv- 
ous system. 

I have spoken of his extreme sensitiveness 
to noise. It is impossible to give any de- 
scription of this terrible symptom which 
shall be in any way adequate. Many of us 
suffer torment through the hideous clamor 
which appears to be inseparable from mod- 
ern civilization; but to Mr. Pulitzer even the 
sudden click of a spoon against a saucer, the 
gurgle of water poured into a glass, the 
striking of a match, produced a spasm of 
suffering. I have seen him turn pale, trem- 
ble, break into a cold perspiration at some 



lU JOSEPH PULITZER 

sound which to most people would have been 
scarcely audible. 

When we were on the yacht every one was 
compelled to wear rubber-soled shoes. When 
Mr. Pulitzer was asleep that portion of the 
deck which was over his bedroom was roped 
off so that no one could walk over his head ; 
and each door which gave access to the rooms 
above his cabin was provided with a brass 
plate on which was cut the legend: "This 
door must not be opened when Mr. Pulitzer 
is asleep." 

With every resource at his command 
which ingenuity could suggest and money 
procure, the one great unsolved problem of 
his later years was to obtain absolute quiet- 
ness at all times. At his magnificent house 
in New York, at his beautiful country home 
at Bar Harbor he had spent tens of thou- 
sands of dollars in a vain effort to procure 
the one luxury which he prized above all 
others. On the yacht the conditions in this 
respect were as nearly perfect as possible; 
but some noise was inseparable from the 
ship's work — letting go the anchor, heaving 



JOSEPH PULITZER 145 

it up again, blowing the foghorn, and so on 
— though most of the ordinary noises had 
been ehminated. 

As an instance of the constant care which 
was taken to save Mr. Pulitzer from noise 
I remember that for some days almonds 
were served with our dessert at dinner, but 
that they suddenly ceased to form part of 
our menu. Being fond of almonds, I asked 
the chief steward why they had stopped 
serving them. After a little hesitation he 
said that it had been done at the suggestion 
of the butler, who had noticed that I broke 
the almonds in half before I ate them and 
that the noise made by their snapping was 
very disagreeable to Mr. Pulitzer. 

With the best intentions in the world, our 
meals were now and then disturbed by noise. 
A knife suddenly slipped with a loud click 
against a plate, a waiter dropped a spoon 
on a silver tray, or some one knocked over a 
glass. We were all in such a state of nerv- 
ous tension that whenever one of these little 
accidents occurred we jumped in our chairs 



146 JOSEPH PULITZER 

as though a pistol had been fired, and looked 
at J. P. with horrified expectancy. 

There could be no doubt whatever as to 
the effect these noises had upon him. He 
winced as a dog winces when you crack a 
whip over him; the only question was 
whether by a powerful effort he could re- 
gain his composure or whether his suffering 
would overcome his self-restraint to the ex- 
tent of making him gloomy or querulous 
during the rest of the meal. 

The effect by no means ceased when we 
rose from table. If by bad luck two or three 
noises occurred at dinner — and our excessive 
anxiety in the matter was sometimes our un- 
doing — Mr. Pulitzer was so upset that he 
would pass a sleepless night. This in its 
turn meant a day during which his tortured 
body made itself master of his mind, and 
plunged him into a state of profound de- 
jection. 

Like most people who suffer acutely from 
noise Mr. Pulitzer was very differently af- 
fected by different kinds of noise. To any 
noise which was necessary, such as that 



JOSEPH PULITZER 147 

caused by letting go the anchor, he could 
make himself indifferent; but very few 
noises were included in this category. 

What caused him the most acute suffering 
was a noise which, while it inflicted pain 
upon him, neither gave pleasure to any one 
else nor achieved a useful purpose. Loud 
talking, whistling, slamming doors, care- 
lessness in handling things, the barking of 
dogs, the "kick" of motor boats, these were 
the noises which made his existence miser- 
able. 

At the back of his physical reaction was a 
mental reaction which intensified every shock 
to his nerves. He complained, and with 
justice, that, leaving out of consideration an 
occasional noise which was purely the result 
of accident, his Ufe was made a burden by 
the utter indifference of the majority of hu- 
man beings to the rights of others. What 
right, he asked, had any one to run a motor 
boat with a machine so noisy that it de- 
stroyed the peace of a whole harbor? 
Above all, what right had such a person to 



148 JOSEPH PULITZER 

come miles out to sea and cruise around the 
yacht, merely to gratify idle curiosity? 

He applied the same test to people who 
shout at one another in the streets, who whis- 
tle at the top of their lungs, or leave doors to 
slam in the faces of those behind them. 

His resentment against these practices 
was made the more bitter by the knowl- 
edge that he was absolutely helpless in the 
matter whenever he came within hearing dis- 
tance of an ill-bred person. 

There was yet another element in this 
which added to his misery. He said to me 
once, when we had been driven off the plage 
at Mentone by two American tourists of the 
worst type, who at a hundred yards' distance 
from each other were yelling their views as 
to which hotel they proposed to meet at for 
lunch, "I can never forget that when I was 
a young man in the full vigor of my health 
I used to regard other people's complaints 
about noise as being merely an affectation. 
I would even make a noise deliberately in 
order to annoy any one who forced the ab- 
surd pretense upon my notice. Well, Mr. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 149 

Ireland, I swear my punishment has been 
heavy enough." 

To revert, however, to Mr. Pulitzer's de- 
pendence on those around him, it must be re- 
membered that nothing could reach him ex- 
cept through the medium of speech. The 
state of his bank account, the condition of 
his investments, the reports about The 
Worlds his business correspondence, the 
daily news in which he was so deeply inter- 
ested, everything upon which he based his 
relation with the affairs of life he had to ac- 
cept at second hand. 

It might be supposed that under these cir- 
cumstances Mr. Pulitzer was easily deceived, 
that when there was no evil intention, for in- 
stance, but simply a desire to spare him an- 
noyance, the exercise of a little ingenuity 
could shield him from anything likely to 
wound his feelings or excite his anger. As 
a matter of fact I have never known a man 
upon whom it would not have been easier to 
practice a deception. His blindness, so far 
from being a hindrance to him in reaching 
the truth, was an aid. 



150 JOSEPH PULITZER 

Two instances will serve to illustrate the 
point. Suppose that I found in the morn- 
ing paper an article which I thought would 
stir J. P. up and spoil his day: when I was 
called to read to him I had no means of 
knowing whether the man whom I replaced 
had taken the same view as myself and had 
skipped the article or whether he had, delib- 
erately or inadvertently, read it to him. The 
same argument applied to the man who was 
to follow me. If I read the article to him I 
might find out later that my predecessor 
had omitted it, or, if I omitted it, that my 
successor had rea-^ it. 

In either event one of us would be in the 
wrong; and it was impossible to tell in ad- 
vance whether the man who read it would be 
blamed for lack of discretion or praised for 
his good judgment, as everything depended 
upon the exact mood in which Mr. Pulitzer 
happened to be. 

It was an awkward dilemma for the sec- 
retary, for, if he did not read it and another 
man did, Mr. Pulitzer might very well in- 
terpret the first man's caution as an effort 



JOSEPH PULITZER 151 

to hoodwink him, or the second man's bold- 
ness as an exhibition of indifference to his 
feehngs, or, what was more likely still, fas- 
ten one fault upon one man and the other 
upon the other. 

The same problem presented itself from a 
different direction. Often, Mr. Pulitzer 
would take out of his pocket a bundle of 
papers — ^newspaper chppings, letters, statis- 
tical reports, and memoranda of various 
kinds. Handing them to his companion he 
would say: 

"Look through these and see if there is a 
letter with the London post mark, and a 
sheet of blue paper with some figures on 
it." 

You could never tell what was behind 
these inquiries. Sometimes he was content 
to know that the papers were there, some- 
times he asked you to read them, and as he 
might very well have them read to hioi by 
several people during the day he had a per- 
fect check on all printed or written matter 
once it was in his hands. 

In addition to all this his exquisite sense 



152 JOSEPH PULITZER 

of hearing enabled him to detect the slight- 
est variation in your tone of voice. If you 
hesitated or betrayed the least uneasiness 
his suspicions were at once aroused and he 
took steps to verify from other sources any 
statement you made under such circum- 
stances. 

It will be readily understood that with 
his keen and analytic mind Mr. Pulitzer 
very soon discovered exactly what kind of 
work was best suited to the capacities of 
each of his secretaries. Thus to Mr. Pater- 
son was assigned the reading of history and 
biography, to Mr. Pollard, a Harvard man 
and the only American on the personal staff 
during my time, novels and plays in French 
and English, to Herr Mann Cierman lit- 
erature of all kinds. Thwaites was chiefly 
occupied with Mr. Pulitzer's correspondence, 
and Craven with the yacht accounts, though 
they, as well as myself, had roving commis- 
sions covering the periodical literature of 
France, Germany, England, and America. 

This division of our reading was by no 
means rigid; it represented Mr. Pulitzer's 



JOSEPH PULITZER 153 

view of our respective spheres of greatest 
utility; but it was often disturbed by one or 
another of us going on sick leave or falling 
a victim to the weather when we were at sea. 

Subject to such chances Pollard always 
read to Mr. Pulitzer during his breakfast 
hour, and Mann during his siesta, while the 
reading after dinner was pretty evenly di- 
vided between Pollard, Paterson, and my- 
self. 

If Mr. Pulitzer once got it into his head 
that a particular man was better than any 
one else for a particular class of work noth- 
ing could reconcile him to that man's ab- 
sence when such work was to be done. 

An amusing instance of this occurred on 
an occasion when Pollard was sea-sick and 
could not read to J. P. at breakfast. I was 
hurriedly summoned to take his place. I 
was dumbfounded, for I had never before 
been called upon for this task, and Mr. 
Pulitzer had often held it up to me as the 
last test of fitness, the charter of your grad- 
uation. I had nothing whatever prepared 
of the kind which J. P. required at that 



154 JOSEPH PULITZER 

time, and I knew that upon the success of 
his breakfast might very well depend the 
general complexion of his whole day. 

In desperation I rushed into Pollard's 
cabin, and its unhappy occupant, with a 
generosity which even seasickness could not 
chill, gave me a bundle of Spectators^ Athe- 
nceums, and Literary Digests, with pencil 
marks in the margins indicating exactly 
what he had intended to read in the ordinary 
course of things. I breathed a sigh of re- 
lief and hastened to the library, where I 
found J. P. very nervous and out of sorts 
after a bad night. 

He immediately began to deplore Pol- 
lard's absence, on the ground that it was 
impossible for anyone to know what to read 
to him at breakfast without years of experi- 
ence and training. I said nothing, feeling 
secure with Pollard's prepared "breakfast 
food," as we called it, in front of me. I 
awaited only his signal to begin reading, 
confident that I could win laurels for myself 
without robbing Pollard, whose wreath was 
firmly fixed on his brow. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 155 

Alas for my hopes! My very first sen- 
tence destroyed my chances, for I had the 
misfortune to begin reading something 
which he had abeady heard. Nothing an- 
noyed him more than this; and we all made 
a habit of writing "Dead" across any article 
in a periodical as soon as J. P. had had it, 
so that we could keep off each other's trails. 
I am willing to believe that this was the first 
and only time that Pollard ever forgot to 
kill an article after he had read it, but it 
was enough, in the deplorable state of Mr. 
Pulitzer's nerves that morning, to inflict a 
wound upon my reputation as a breakfast- 
time reader which months did not suffice to 
heal. 

With such a bad start Mr. Pulitzer im- 
mediately concluded that I was useless, and 
he worked himself up into such a state about 
it that passage after passage, carefully 
marked by Pollard, was greeted with, 

"Stop! Stop! For God's sake!" or, 

"Next! Next!" or, 

"My God! Is there much more of that?" 
or. 



156 JOSEPH PULITZER 

"Well, Mr. Ireland, isn't there anything 
interesting in all those papers?" 

I bore up manfully against this until he 
made the one remark I could not stand, 

"Now, Mr. Ireland," he said, his voice 
taking on a tone of gentle reproach, "I 
know you've done your best, but it is very 
bad. If you don't believe me, just take those 
papers to Mr. Pollard when he feels better ; 
don't disturb him now when he's ill; and 
show him what you read to me. Now, just 
for fun, I'd like you to do that. He will 
tell you that there is not a single line which 
you have read that he would have read had 
he been in your place. I hope I haven't 
been too severe with you; but I hold up my 
hands and swear that Mr. Pollard wouldn't 
have read me a line of that rubbish." 

This was too much! Carefully control- 
ling my voice so that no trace of malice 
should be detected in it, I replied : 

"I took these papers off Mr. Pollard's 
table a moment before I came to you, and 
the parts I have read are the parts he had 



JOSEPH PULITZER 157 

marked, mth the intention of reading them 
to you himself." 

I thought I had J. P. cornered. It was 
before I learned that there was no such 
thing as cornering J. P. 

Leaning toward me, and putting a hand 
on my shoulder, he said: 

"Now, boy, don't be put out about this. 
I do believe, honestly, that you did your 
best; but you should not make excuses. 
When you are wrong, admit it, and try and 
benefit by my advice. You will find a very 
natural explanation of your mistake. Per- 
haps the passages Mr. Pollard marked were 
the ones he did not intend to read to me, or 
perhaps you took the wrong set of papers; 
some perfectly natural explanation I am 
sure." 

That night at dinner, when I was still 
smarting under the sense of injustice bom 
of my morning's experience, J. P. gave me 
an opening which I could not allow to pass 
unused. 

Turning to me during a pause in the con- 
versation, he asked: 



158 JOSEPH PULITZER 

"And what have you been doing this 
afternoon, Mr. Ireland?" 

A happy inspiration flashed across my 
mind, and I replied: 

"I've been making a rough draft of a 
play, sir." 

"Well, my God! I didn't know you 
wrote plays." 

"Very seldom, at any rate; but I had an 
idea this morning that I couldn't resist." 

"What is it to be called?" inquired J. P. 

" 'The Importance of being Pollard,' " I 
answered, whereupon J. P. and everyone 
else at the table had a good laugh. They 
had all been through a breakfast with J. P. 
when Pollard was away, and could sympa- 
thize with my feelings. 

Mr. Pulitzer was very sensible of the diffi- 
culties which lay in everybody's path at the 
times when lack of sleep or a prolonged at- 
tack of pain had made him excessively ir- 
ritable; and when he had recovered from 
one of these periods of strain, and was con- 
scious of having been rough in his manner, 
he often took occasion to make amends. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 159 

Sometimes he would do this when we were 
at table, adopting a humorous tone as he 
said, "I'm afraid so-and-so will never for- 
give me for the way I treated him this after- 
noon; but I want to say that he really read 
me an excellent story and read it very well, 
and that I am grateful to him. I was feel- 
ing wretchedly ill and had a frightful head- 
ache, and if I said anything that hurt his 
feelings I apologize." 

Once, during my weeks of probation, 
when J. P. felt that he had carried his test 
of my good temper beyond reason, he 
stopped suddenly in our walk, laid a hand 
on my shoulder, and asked : 

"What do you feel when I am unreason- 
able with you? Do you feel angry? Do 
you bear malice?" 

"Not at all," I replied. "I suppose my 
feeling is very much like that of a nurse for 
a patient. I realize that you are suffering 
and that you are not to be held responsible 
for what you do at such times." 

"I thank you for that, Mr. Ireland," he 
replied. "You never said anything which 



160 JOSEPH PULITZER 

pleased me more. Never forget that I am 
blind, and that I am in pain most of the 
time." 

A matter which I had reason to notice at 
a very early stage of my acquaintance with 
Mr. Pulitzer was that when he was in a bad 
mood it was the worst possible policy to offer 
no resistance to his pressure. It was part 
of his nature to go forward in any direction 
until he encountered an obstacle. When he 
reached one he paused before making up his 
mind whether he would go through it or 
round it. The further he went the more 
interested he became, his purpose always 
being to discover a boundary, whether of 
your knowledge, of your patience, of your 
memory, or of your nervous endurance. 

He never respected a man who did not at 
some point stand up and resist him. After 
the line had once been drawn at that point, 
and his curiosity had been gratified, he was 
always careful not to approach it too 
closely; and it was only on the rare occa- 
sions when he was in exceptionally bad con- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 161 

dition that any clash occurred after the first 
one had been settled. 

I put off my own little fight for a long 
time, partly because I was very much af- 
fected by the sight of his wretchedness, and 
partly because I did not at first realize how 
necessary it was for him to find out just 
how far my self-control could be depended 
upon. As soon as this became clear to me 
I determined to seize the first favorable op- 
portunity which presented itself of getting 
into my intrenchments and firing a blank 
cartridge or two. 

It was after I had been with him about 
a month that my chance came. I had no- 
ticed that his manner toward me was slowly 
but steadily growing more hostile, and I 
had been expecting daily to receive my dis- 
missal from the courteous hands of Dun- 
ningham, or to find myself unable to go 
further with the ordeal. 

Finally, I consulted Dunningham, and 
was informed by him, to my great surprise, 
that I was doing very well and that Mr, 
Pulitzer was pleased with me. This infor- 



162 JOSEPH PULITZER 

mation cleared the ground in front of me, 
and that afternoon when I was called to 
walk with Mr. Pulitzer I decided to put out 
a danger signal if I was hard pressed. 

Everything favored such a course. J. P. 
had enjoyed a good siesta and was feeling 
unusually well; if, therefore, he was very 
disagreeable I would know that it was from 
design and not from an attack of nerves. 
Furthermore, be selected a subject of con- 
versation in regard to which I was as well, 
if not better, informed than he was — a ques- 
tion relating to British Colonial policy. 

The moment I began to speak I saw that 
his object was to drive me to the wall. He 
flatly contradicted me again and again, in- 
sinuated that I had never met certain states- 
men whose words I repeated, and, finally, 
after I had concluded my arguments in sup- 
port of the view I was advancing, he said in 
an angry tone, assumed for the occasion, of 
course: 

"Mr. Ireland, I am really distressed that 
we should have had this discussion. I had 
hoped that, with years of training and ad- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 163 

vice, I might have been able to make some- 
thing out of you; but any man who could 
seriously hold the opinion you have ex- 
pressed, and could attempt to justify it with 
the mass of inaccuracies and absurdities that 
you have given me, is simply a damned 
fool." 

''I am sorry you said that, Mr. Pulitzer," 
I replied in a very serious voice. 

"Why, for God's sake, you don't mind 
my calling you a damned fool, do you?" 

"Not in the least, sir. But when you call 
me a damned fool you shatter an ideal I held 
about you." 

"What's that? An ideal about me? What 
do you mean?" 

"Well, sir, years before I met you I had 
heard that if there was one thing above all 
others which distinguished you from all 
other journalists it was that you had the 
keenest nose for news of any man living." 

"What has that to do with my calling you 
a damned fool?" 

"Simply this, that the fact that I'm a 



164 JOSEPH PULITZER 

damned fool hasn't been news to me any- 
time during the past twenty years." 

He saw the point at once, laughed heart- 
ily and, putting an arm round my shoulders, 
as was his habit with all of us when he 
wished to show a friendly feeling or take 
the edge off a severe rebuke, said: 

"Now, boy, you're making fun of me, 
and you must not make fun of a poor old 
blind man. Now, then, I take it all back; 
I shouldn't have called you a damned fool." 

It was from this moment that my rela- 
tions with Mr. Pulitzer began to improve. 

A few days after the incident which I 
have just related we dropped anchor in the 
Bay of Naples, and Mr. Pulitzer announced 
his intention of sailing for New York by a 
White Star boat the following afternoon. 
He asked me to go with him; and I accepted 
this invitation as the sign that my period of 
probation was over. 

Everything was prepared for our de- 
parture. Dunningham worked indefatiga- 
bly. He went aboard the White Star boat, 
arranged for the accommodation of our 



JOSEPH PULITZER 165 

party, had partitions knocked down so that 
Mr. Pulitzer could have a private dining- 
room and a library, and convoyed aboard 
twenty or thirty trunks and cases contain- 
ing books, mineral waters, wines, cigars, 
fruit, special articles of diet, clothes, fur 
coats, rugs, etc., for J. P. 

We all packed our belongings, tele- 
graphed to our friends, sent ashore for the 
latest issues of the magazines, and sat 
around in deck chairs waiting for the word 
to follow our things aboard the liner. 

After half an hour of suspense Dunning- 
ham came out of the library, where he had 
been in consultation with J. P., and as he 
advanced toward us we rose and made our 
way to the gangway, where one of the 
launches was swinging to her painter. 

Dunningham, smiling and imperturbable 
as ever, raised his hand and said, "No, gen- 
tlemen, Mr. Puhtzer has changed his mind; 
we are not going to America. We remain 
on the yacht and sail this afternoon for 
Athens." 

He disappeared over the side, and an hour 



166 JOSEPH PULITZER 

or two later returned with the chef and the 
butler and one of the saloon stewards, who 
had gone aboard the liner to make things 
ready, and some tons of baggage. 

We sailed just as the White Star boat 
cleared the end of the mole. When she 
passed us, within a hundred yards, she 
dipped her flag. I was walking with Mr. 
Pulitzer at the time and mentioned the ex- 
change of salutes. He was silent for a few 
minutes. Then he asked, "Has she passed 
us?" "Yes," I rephed, "she's half-a-mile 
ahead of us now." "Have you got your pad 
with you? Just make a note to ask Thwaites 
to cable to New York from the next port 
we call at and tell someone to send two hun- 
dred of the best Havana cigars to the cap- 
tain. That man has some sense. Most cap- 
tains would have blown their damned whistle 
when they dipped their flag. Have a note 
written to the captain telling him that I ap- 
preciated his consideration." 

Our voyage to Athens and thence, through 
the Corinth Canal, back to Mentone, was 
free from incident, J. P. discussed the pos- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 167 

sibility of going to Constantinople or to 
Venice, but our cabled inquiries about the 
weather brought discouraging rephes de- 
scribing an unusually cold season, and these 
pro j ects were abandoned. 

About this time Mr. Pulitzer's health 
showed a marked improvement, which was 
rejflected in the most agreeable manner in 
the general conditions of life on the yacht. 
He had been worried for some weeks about 
his plans for going to ISTew York, and this 
had interfered with his sleep, had increased 
his nervousness and aggravated every symp- 
tom of his physical weakness. With this 
matter finally disposed of he could look for- 
ward to a peaceful cruise, during which he 
would be able to catch up with his careful 
reading of the marked file of The World, 
and thus remove a weight from his mind. 

He detested having work accumulate on 
his hands, but when his health was worse 
than usual this was unavoidable. He al- 
ways drove himself to the last ounce of his 
endurance, and it was only when his condi- 
tion indicated an imminent collapse that he 



168 JOSEPH PULITZER 

would consent to drop everything except 
light reading, and to spend a few days out 
at sea without calling anywhere for letters, 
papers, or cables. 

It was during this, our last, cruise in the 
Mediterranean that I discovered that Mr. 
Pulitzer was one of the best and most fas- 
cinating talkers I had ever heard. Once in 
a while, when he was feeling cheerful after 
a good night's rest and a pleasant day's 
reading, he monopolized the conversation at 
lunch or dinner. He was generally more 
willing to talk when we took our meals at a 
large round table on deck, for he loved the 
sea breeze and was soothed by it. 

When he talked he simply compelled your 
attention. I often felt that, if he had not 
made his career otherwise, he might have 
been one of the world's greatest actors, or 
one of its most popular orators. In flexi- 
bility of tone, in variety of gesture, in the 
change of his facial expression he was the 
peer of anyone I have seen on the stage. 

To an extraordinary flow of language he 
added a range of information and a vivid- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 169 

ness of expression truly astonishing. His 
favorite themes were poHtics and the Hves 
of great men. To his monologues on the 
former subject he brought a ripe wisdom, 
based upon the most extensive reading and 
the shrewdest observation, and quickened by 
the keenest enthusiasm. He was by no 
means a political bigot ; and there was not a 
political experiment, from the democracy of 
the Greeks to the referendum in Switzer- 
land, with the details of which he was not 
perfectly familiar. Although he was a con- 
vinced believer in the Republican form of 
government, having, as he expressed it, "no 
use for the King business," he was fully 
alive to the peculiar dangers and difficulties 
with which modern progress has confronted 
popular institutions. 

When the publication of some work 
like Rosebery's Chatham or Monypenny's 
Disraeli afforded an occasion, Mr. Pulitzer 
would spend an hour before we left the 
table in giving us a picture of some exciting 
crisis in English politics, the high lights 
picked out in pregnant phrases of charac- 



170 JOSEPH PULITZER 

terization, in brilliant epitome of the facts, 
in spontaneous epigram, and illustrative 
anecdote. Whether he spoke of the Hol- 
land House circle, of the genius of Crom- 
well, of Napoleon's campaigns, or sought 
to point a moral from the lives of Bis- 
marck, Metternich, Louis XI, or Kossuth, 
every sentence was marked by the same pen- 
etrating analysis, the same facihty of ex- 
pression, the same clearness of thought. 

On rare occasions he talked of his early 
days, telling us in a charming, simple, and 
unaffected manner of the tragic and humor- 
ous episodes with which his youth had been 
crowded. Of the former I recall a striking 
description of a period during which he 
filled two positions in St. Louis, one involv- 
ing eight hours' work during the day, the 
other eight hours during the night. Four 
of the remaining eight were devoted to 
studying English. 

His first connection with journalism arose 
out of an experience which he related with 
a wealth of detail which showed how deeply 
it had been burned into his memory. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 171 

When he arrived in St. Louis he soon 
found himself at the end of his resources, 
and was faced with the absolute impossibil- 
ity of securing work in that city. In com- 
pany with forty other men he applied at 
the office of a general agent who had ad- 
vertised for hands to go down the Missis- 
sippi and take up well-paid posts on a 
Louisiana sugar plantation. The agent de- 
manded a fee of five dollars from each ap- 
plicant, and, by pooling their resources, the 
members of this wretched band managed to 
meet the charge. The same night they were 
taken on board a steamer which immediately 
started down river. At three o'clock in the 
morning they were landed on the river bank 
about forty miles below St. Louis, at a spot 
where there was neither house, road, nor 
clearing. Before the marooned party had 
time to realize its plight the steamer had 
disappeared. 

A council of war was held, and it was 
decided that they should tramp back to St. 
Louis, and put a summary termination to 
the agent's career by storming his office and 



172 JOSEPH PULITZER 

murdering him. Whether or not this reck- 
less program would have heen carried out 
it is impossible to say, for when, three 
days later, the ragged army arrived in the 
city, worn out with fatigue and half dead 
from hunger, the agent had decamped. 

A reporter happened to pick up the story, 
and by mere chance met Pulitzer and in- 
duced him to write out in German the tale 
of his experiences. This account created 
such an impression on the mind of the editor 
through whose hands it passed that Pulitzer 
was offered, and accepted, with the greatest 
misgivings, as he solemnly assured us, a 
position as reporter on the Westliche Post, 

The event proved that there had been no 
grounds for J. P.'s modest doubts. After 
he had been some time on the paper, things 
went so badly that two reporters had to be 
got rid of. The editor kept Pulitzer on the 
staff, because he felt that if anyone was 
destined to force him out of the editorial 
chair it was not a young, uneducated for- 
eigner, who could hardly mumble half-a- 
dozen words of English. The editor was 




JOSEPH PULITZER 
AT THE AGE OF TWENTY'THREE 



JOSEPH PULITZER 173 

mistaken. Within a few years J. P. not 
only supplanted him but became half-pro- 
prietor of the paper. 

Another interesting anecdote of his early 
days, which he told with great relish, re- 
lated to his experience as a fireman on a 
Mississippi ferryboat. His limited knowl- 
edge of English was regarded by the captain 
as a personal affront, and that fire-eating 
old-timer made it his particular business to 
let young Pulitzer feel the weight of his 
authority. At last the overwork and the 
constant bullying drove J. P. into revolt, 
and he left. the boat after a violent quarrel 
with the captain. 

Whenever J. P. reached this point in the 
story, and I heard him tell it several times, 
his face lighted up with amusement, and 
he had to stop until he had enjoyed a good 
laugh. 

"Well, my God!" he would conclude, 
"about two years later, when I had learned 
English and studied some law and been 
made a notary public, this very same captain 
walked into my office in St. Louis one day 



174 JOSEPH PULITZER 

to have some documents sealed. As soon as 
he saw me he stopped short, as if he had 
seen a ghost, and said, "Say, ain't you the 
damned cuss that I fired off my boat?" 

*'I told him yes, I was. He was the most 
surprised man I ever saw, but after he had 
sworn himself hoarse he faced the facts and 
gave me his business." 

Mr. Pulitzer always declared that the 
proudest day of his life, the occasion on 
which his vanity was most tickled, was when 
he was elected to the Missouri Legislature. 
Things were evidently run in a rather 
happy-go-lucky fashion in those early days, 
since, as he admitted with a reminiscent 
smile, he was absolutely disqualified for elec- 
tion, being neither an American citizen nor 
of age. 

Mr. Pulitzer's anecdotes about himself al- 
ways ended in one way. He would break 
off suddenly and exclaim, "For Heaven's 
sake, why do you let me run on like this; 
as soon as a man gets into the habit of talk- 
ing about his past adventures he might just 



JOSEPH PULITZER 175 

as well make up his mind that he is grow- 
ing old and that his intellect is giving way." 
It was this strong disinclination for per- 
sonal reminiscence which prevented Mr. 
Pulitzer, despite many urgent appeals, from 
writing his autobiography. It is a thousand 
pities that he adhered to this resolution, for 
his career, as well in point of interest as in 
achievement and picturesqueness, would 
have stood the test of comparison with that 
of any man whose life-story has been pre- 
served in literature. 



CHAPTER VI 

Wiesbaden and an Atlantic Voyage 

AT last the time came when we had to 
leave the yacht and make a pilgrim- 
age to Wiesbaden, in order that Mr. Pulit- 
zer might submit to a cure before sailing for 
IVew York. 

The first stage of our journey took us 
from Genoa to Milan. Here we stayed for 
five hours so that J. P. could have his lunch 
and his siesta comfortably at an hotel. Pat- 
erson had been sent ahead two or three days 
in advance to look over the hotels and to 
select the one which promised to be least 
noisy. On our arrival in Milan J. P. was 
taken to an automobile, and in ten minutes 
he was in his rooms. 

Simple as these arrangements appear 
from the bald statement of what actually 

176 



JOSEPH PULITZER 177 

happened they really involved a great deal 
of care and forethought. It was not enough 
that Paterson should visit half-a-dozen 
hotels and make his choice from a cursory 
inspection. After his choice had been nar- 
rowed down by a process of elimination he 
had to spend several hours in each of two 
or three hotels, in the room intended for 
J. P., so that he could detect any of the 
hundred noises which might make the room 
uninhabitable to its prospective tenant. 

The room might be too near the elevator, 
it might be too near a servants' staircase, it 
might overlook a courtyard where carpets 
were beaten, or a street with heavy traffic, it 
might be within earshot of a dining-room 
where an orchestra played or a smoking- 
room with the possibility of loud talking, it 
might open off a passage which gave access 
to some much frequented reception-room. 

Most of these points could be determined 
by merely observing the location of the 
room. But other things were to be consid- 
ered. Did the windows rattle, did the floor 
creak, did the doors open and shut quietly, 



178 JOSEPH PULITZER 

was the ventilation good, were there noisy 
guests in the adjoining rooms? 

Tliis last difficulty was, I understand, 
usually overcome by Mr. Pulitzer engaging, 
in addition to his own room, a room on either 
side of it, three rooms facing it, the room 
above it and the room beneath it. 

Even the question of the drive from the 
station to the hotel had to be thought out. 
A trial trip was made in an automobile. If 
the route followed a car line or passed any 
spot likely to be noisy, such as a market 
place or a school playground, or if it led 
over a roughly paved road on which the car 
would jolt, another route had to be selected, 
which, as far as possible, dodged the unfa- 
vorable conditions. 

Our carefully arranged journey passed 
without incident. We had a private car 
from Milan to Frankfort and another for 
the short run to Wiesbaden, where we ar- 
rived in time for lunch on the day after our 
departure from Genoa. Everything had 
been prepared for our reception by some 
one who had made similar arrangements on 




JOSEPH PULITZER IN I906, 
TAKEN ON THE TRAIN BETWEEN LONDON AND DOVER 



JOSEPH PULITZER 179 

' former occasions. We occupied the whole 
of a villa belonging to one of the large 
hotels, and situated less than a hundred 
yards from it. 

In the main our life was modeled upon 
that at the Cap Martin villa; but part of 
Mr. Pulitzer's morning was devoted to 
baths, massage, and the drinking of waters. 
Our meals were taken, as a rule, either in a 
private dining-room at the hotel or in the 
big restaurant of the Kurhaus; but when 
Mr. Pulitzer was feeling more than usually 
tired the table was laid in the dining-room 
of the villa. 

I Our dinners at the Kurhaus were a wel- 
come change from our ordinary meals with 
their set routine of literary discussions. Mr. 
Pulitzer was immensely interested in peo- 
ple; but it was impossible for him to meet 
them, except on rare occasions, because the 
excitement was bad for his health. When- 
ever he dined in a crowded restaurant, how- 
ever, our time was fully occupied in describ- 
ing with the utmost minuteness the men, 
women, and children around us. 



180 JOSEPH PULITZER 

The Kurhaus was an excellent place for 
the exercise of our descriptive powers. In 
addition to the ordinary crowd of pleasure- 
seekers and health-hunters there were, dur- 
ing a great part of our visit, a large num- 
ber of military men, for the Kaiser spent a 
week at Wiesbaden that year and reviewed 
some troops, and this involved careful 
preparation in advance by a host of court 
officials and high army officers. 

Under these circumstances the dining- 
room of the Kurhaus presented a scene full 
of color and animation. Sometimes J. P. 
said to one of us: "Look around for a few 
minutes and pick out the most interesting- 
looking man and woman in the room, ex- 
amine them carefully, try and catch the tone 
of their voices, and when you are ready de- 
scribe them to me." Or he might say: "I 
hear a curious, sharp, incisive voice some- 
where over there on my right. There it is 
now — don't you hear it? — s s s s s, every s 
like a hiss. Describe that man to me; tell 
me what kind of people he's talking to; tell 
me what you think his profession is." Or 



JOSEPH PULITZER 181 

it might be: "There are some gabbling 
women over there. Describe them to me. 
How are they dressed, are they painted, are 
they wearing jewels, how old are they?" 

In whatever form the request was made 
its fulfilment meant a description covering 
everything which could be detected by the 
eye or surmised from any available clew. 

Describing people to J. P. was by no 
means an easy task. It was no use saying 
that a man had a medium-sized nose, that he 
was of average height, and that his hair was 
rather dark. Ever}i;hing had to be given 
in feet and inches and in definite colors. 
You had to exercise your utmost powers to 
describe the exact cast of the features, the 
peculiar texture and growth of the hair, the 
expression of the eyes, and every little trick 
of gait or gesture. 

!Mr. Puhtzer was very sceptical of every- 
body's faculty of description. He made us 
describe people, and specially his o^mi chil- 
dren and others whom he knew well, again 
and again, and his unwillingness to accept 
any description as being good rested no 



182 JOSEPH PULITZER 

doubt upon the wide divergence between the 
different descriptions he received of the 
same person. 

There were few things which Mr. Pulitzer 
enjoyed more than having a face described 
to him, whether of a living person or of a 
portrait, and as our table-talk was often 
about men and women of distinction or no- 
toriety, dead or living, any one of us might 
be called upon at any time to portray fea- 
ture by feature some person whose name had 
been mentioned. 

By providing ourselves with illustrated 
catalogues of the Royal Academy exhibi- 
tions and of the National Portrait Gallery, 
and by cutting out the portraits with which 
the modern publisher so lavishly decorates 
his announcements, we generally managed, 
by pulling together, to cover the ground 
pretty well. I have sat through a meal dur- 
ing which one or another of us furnished a 
microscopic description of the faces of War- 
ren Hastings, Lord Clive, President Wil- 
son, the present King and Queen of Eng- 
land, the late John W. Gates, Ignace Pade- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 183 

rewski, and an odd dozen current murderers, 
embezzlers, divorce habitues, and candidates 
for political office. 

The delicate enjoyment of this game was 
not reached, however, until, at the following 
meal, one of us, who had been absent at the 
original delineation, was asked to cover some 
of the ground that had been gone over a few 
hours earher. Mr. Pulitzer would say: "Is 
Mr. So-and-So here? Well, now, just for 
fun, let us see what he has to say about the 
appearance of some of the people we spoke 
about at lunch." 

The result was almost always an astonish- 
ing disclosure of the inability of intelligent 
people to observe closely, to describe accur- 
ately, and to reach any agreement as to the 
significance of what they have seen. It was 
bad enough when the latest witness had be- 
fore him the actual pictures on which the 
first description had been based; even then 
crooked noses became straight, large mouths 
small, disdain was turned to aifabihty and 
ingenuousness to guile ; but where this guide 



184 JOSEPH PULITZER 

was lacking the descriptions were often 
ludicrously discrepant. 

While we were at Wiesbaden we seldom 
spent much time at the dinner table, as J. P. 
usually took his choice between walking in 
the garden of the Kurhaus and listening to 
the orchestra and going to the opera. One 
night we motored over to Frankfort to hear 
Der Bosenhavalier, but the excursion was 
a dismal failure. We had to go over a 
stretch of very bad road, and with J. P. 
shaken into a state of extreme nervousness 
the very modem strains of the opera failed 
to please. 

At the end of the second act J. P., who 
had been growing more and more dismal as 
the music bumped along its disjointed 
course, either in vain search or in careful 
avoidance of anything resembling a pleasant 
sound, turned to me and said: "My God! 
I can't stand any more of this. Will you 
please go and find the automobile and bring 
it round to the main entrance. I want to go 
home." 

I saw a great deal of Mr. Pulitzer while 



JOSEPH PULITZER 185 

we were at Wiesbaden, owing to the cir- 
cumstance that Paterson was called to Eng- 
land on urgent private affairs and Pollard 
was away on leave. The absence of these 
two men was as much regretted by the staff 
as it was by J. P. himself. Paterson was, 
from his extraordinary erudition, seldom at 
a loss for a topic of conversation which 
would rivet J. P.'s attention, and Pollard, 
who had been a number of years with J. P., 
was not only, on his own subjects, the con- 
versational peer of Paterson, but was in ad- 
dition, from his soothing voice and manner 
and from his long and careful study of J. 
P., invaluable as a mental and nervous seda- 
tive. 

It was at Wiesbaden that I first began to 
read books regularly to J. P. I read him 
portions of the biographies of Parnell, of 
Sir William Howard Russell, of President 
Polk (very little of this), of Napoleon, of 
Martin Luther, and at least a third of 
Macaulay's ^^^a^/s. 

He was a great admirer of Lord Macau- 
lay's writings and read them constantly, as 



186 JOSEPH PULITZER 

he found in them most of the qualities 
which he admired — great descriptive power, 
political acumen, satire, neatness of phrase, 
apt comparisons and analogies, and shrewd 
analysis of character. Many passages he 
made me read over and over again at dif- 
ferent times. I reproduce a few of his fa- 
vorite paragraphs for the purpose of show- 
ing what appealed to his taste. 

From the Essay on Sir William Temple, 
the following lines referring to the Right 
Hon. Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, who, 
after his retirement from public life, wrote 
the Memoirs of Temple and stated in his 
preface that experience had taught him the 
superiority of literature to politics for de- 
veloping the kindlier feelings and conducing 
to an agreeable life: 

He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy 
any of those who are still engaged in a pursuit 
from which, at most, they can only expect that, 
by relinquishing liberal studies and social pleas- 
ures, by passing nights without sleep and sum- 
mers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature, 
they may attain that laborious, that invidious, 



JOSEPH PULITZER 187 

that closely watched slavery which is mocked 
with the name of power. 

More often than any others I read him 
the following passages from the Essay on 
Milton: 

The final and permanent fruits of liberty are 
wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate 
effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting 
errors, scepticism on points the most clear, dog- 
matism on points the most mysterious. It is just 
at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. 
They pull down the scaffolding from, the half-fin- 
ished edifice: they point to the flying dust, the 
falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful 
irregularity of the whole appearance; and then 
ask in scorn where the promised splendor and com- 
fort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms 
were to prevail there would never be a good house 
or a good government in the world. 

There is only one cure for the evils which newly 
acquired freedom produces ; and that cure is free- 
dom. 

The blaze of truth and liberty may at first 
dazzle and bewilder nations which have become 
half blind in the house of bondage. But let them 
gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In 
a few years men learn to reason. The extreme 
violence of opinion subsides. Hostile theories cor- 
rect each other. The scattered elements of truth 



188 JOSEPH PULITZER 

cease to contend, and begin to coalesce. And at 
length a system of justice and order is educed 
out of the chaos. 

If men are to wait for liberty till they become 
wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait 
forever. 

I was surprised one day on returning to 
the villa after a walk in the Kurhaus gar- 
dens with J. P. to find an addition to our 
company in the person of the second gentle- 
man who had examined me in London at the 
time I had applied for the post of secretary 
to Mr. Pulitzer. 

This gentleman occupied what I imagine 
must have been the only post of its kind in 
the world. He was, in addition to whatever 
other duties he performed, Mr. Pulitzer's 
villa-seeker. 

It was Mr. Pulitzer's custom to talk a 
good deal about his future plans, not those 
for the immediate future, in regard to which 
he was usually very reticent, but those for 
the following year, or for a vague "some- 
day" when many things were to be done 
which as yet were nothing more than the 



JOSEPH PULITZER 189 

toys with which his imagination delighted 
to play. 

As he always spent a great part of the 
year in Europe, a residence had to be found 
for him, it might be in Vienna, or London, 
or Berlin, or Mentone, or in any other place 
which emerged as a possibility out of the 
long discussions of the next year's itinerary. 

Whenever the arguments in favor of any 
place had so far prevailed that a visit there 
had been accepted in principle as one of our 
future movements it became the duty of the 
villa-seeker to go to the locality, to gather a 
mass of information about its climate, its 
amenities, its resident and floating popula- 
tion, its accessibility by sea and land, the 
opportunities for hearing good music, and 
to report in the minutest detail upon all 
available houses which appeared likely to 
suit Mr. Pulitzer's needs. 

These reports were accompanied by maps, 
plans, and photographs, and they were con- 
sidered by J. P. with the utmost care. Par- 
ticular attention was paid to the streets and 
to the country roads in the neighborhood, 



190 JOSEPH PULITZER 

as it was necessary to have facilities for mo- 
toring, for riding, and for walking. 

The next step was to secure a villa, and 
after that had been done the alterations had 
to be undertaken which would make it hab- 
itable for J. P. These might be of a com- 
paratively simple nature, a matter of fitting 
silencers to the doors and putting up double 
windows to keep out the noise; but they 
might extend much further and involve 
more or less elaborate changes in the in- 
terior arrangements. Even after all this 
had been done a sudden shift of plans might 
send the villa-seeker scurrying across 
Europe to begin the whole process over 
again in order to be prepared for new devel- 
opments. 

At the time I left London to join J. P. 
at Mentone I had stipulated that, if I should 
chance to be selected to fill the vacant post, 
I should not be called upon to take up my 
duties until I had returned to London and 
spent a fortnight there in clearing up my 
private affairs. 

After we had been a few weeks at Wies- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 191 

baden it became absolutely necessary for me 
to go to London for that purpose; and this 
led to a struggle with J. P. which nearly 
brought our relations to an end. 

As soon as I broached the subject of a 
fortnight's leave of absence J. P. set his 
face firmly against the proposal. This was 
due not so much to any feeling on his part 
that my absence would be an inconvenience 
to him, for both Paterson and Pollard had 
returned to duty, but to an almost uncon- 
querable repugnance he had to any one ex- 
cept himself initiating any plan which would 
in the slightest degree affect his arrange- 
ments. His sensitiveness on this point was 
so delicate that it was impossible, for in- 
stance, for any of us to accept an invitation 
to lunch or dine with friends who might 
happen to be in our neighborhood, or to ask 
for half a day off* for any purpose whatever. 

I do not mean to say that we never got 
away for a meal or that we were never free 
for a few hours; as a matter of fact, J. P. 
was by no means ungenerous in such things 
once a man had passed the trial stage; but. 



192 JOSEPH PULITZER 

although J. P. might say to you, "Take two 
days off and amuse yourself," or "Take the 
evening off, and don't trouble to get back 
to work until lunch-time to-morrow," it was 
out of the question for you to say to J. P. : 
"An old friend of mine is here for the day, 
would you mind my taking lunch with him?" 

No one, I am sure, ever made a suggestion 
of that kind to J. P. more than once — ^the 
effect upon him was too startling. 

J. P.'s favors in the way of giving time 
off were always granted subject to a change 
of mind on his part ; and these changes were 
often so sudden that it was our custom as 
soon as leave was given to disappear from 
the yacht or the villa at the earliest possi- 
ble moment. But at times even an instant 
departure was too slow, for it might happen 
that before you were out of the room J. P. 
would say: "Just a moment, Mr. So-and-So, 
you wouldn't mind if I asked you to put off 
your holiday till to-morrow, would you? I' 
think I would like you to finish that novel 
this evening; I am really interested to see 
how it comes out." 



JOSEPH PULITZER 193 

This, of course, was rather disappointing ; 
but the great disadvantage of not getting 
away was that Mr. Puhtzer's memory gen- 
erally clung very tenaciously to the fact that 
he had given you leave, and lost the subse- 
quent act of rescinding it. The effect of 
this was that for the practical purpose of 
getting a day off your turn was used up as 
soon as J. P. granted it, without any refer- 
ence to whether you actually got it or not; 
and the phrase, "until to-morrow," was not 
to be interpreted literally or to be acted upon 
without a further distinct permission. 

The only "right" any of us had to time 
off was to our annual vacation of two weeks, 
which we had to take whenever J. P. 
wished. If, for any reason, one of us 
wanted leave of absence for a week or so, 
the matter had to be put into the hands of 
the discreet and diplomatic Dunningham; 
and so when the time came when I simply 
had to go to London it was to Dunningham 
I went for counsel. 

Judging by the results, his intercession on 
my behalf was not very successful, for, on 



194. JOSEPH PULITZER 

the occasion of our next meeting, J. P. made 
it clear to me that if I insisted on going to 
London it would be on pain of his displeas- 
ure and at the peril of my post. As I look 
back upon the incident, however, it is quite 
clear to me that the whole of his arguments 
and his dark hints were launched merely to 
test my sense of duty to those persons in 
London whom I had promised to see. 

A day or two later J. P. told me that as I 
was going to London I might as well stay 
there for a month or two before joining him 
in New York. He outlined a course of 
study for me, which included lessons in 
speaking (my voice being harsh and un- 
pleasant) and visits to all the principal art 
galleries, theaters and other places of inter- 
est, with a view to describing everything 
when I rejoined him. 

On the eve of my departure Dunningham 
handed me, with Mr. Pulitzer's compliments, 
an envelope containing a handsome present, 
in the most acceptable form a present can 
take. 

It was not until I was in the train, and 



JOSEPH PULITZER 195 

the train had started, that I was able to 
realize that I was free. During the journey 
to London my extraordinary experiences of 
the past three months detached themselves 
from the sum of my existence and became 
cloaked with that haze of unreality which be- 
longs to desperate illness or to a tragedy 
looked back upon from days of health and 
peace. Walking down St. James's Street 
twenty- four hours after leaving Wiesbaden, 
J. P. and the yacht and the secretaries in- 
vaded my memory not as things experienced 
but as things seen in a play or read in a story 
long ago. 

I lost no time in making myself comfort-' 
able in London. Inquiries directed to the 
proper quarter soon brought me into touch 
with a gentleman to whose skill, I was as- 
sured, no voice, however disagreeable, could 
fail to respond. I saw my friends, my busi- 
ness associates, my tailor. I went to see 
Fanny's First Play three times, the Na- 
tional Portrait Gallery twice, the National 
Gallery once, and laid out my plans to see 
all the places in London (shame forbidding 



196 JOSEPH PULITZER 

me to enumerate them) which every Eng- 
lishman ought to have seen and which I had 
not seen. 

This lasted for about two weeks, during 
which I saw something of Craven, who had 
left us in Naples to study something or 
other in London, and who was under orders 
to hold himself in readiness to go to New 
York with J. P. We dined at my club one 
night, and when I returned to my flat I 
found a telegram from Mr. Tuohy, instruct- 
ing me to join J. P. in Liverpool the next 
day in time to sail early in the afternoon on 
the Cedric, as it had been decided to leave 
Craven in London for the present. 

The voyage differed but little from our 
cruises in the yacht. J. P. took his meals 
in his own suite, and as Mrs. Pulitzer and 
Miss Pulitzer were on board they usually 
dined with him, one of the secretaries mak- 
ing a fourth at table. 

In the matter of guarding J. P. from 
noise, extraordinary precautions were taken. 
Heavy mats were laid outside his cabin, spe- 
cially made a dozen years before and stored 



JOSEPH PULITZER 197 

by the White Star people waiting his call; 
that portion of the deck which surrounded 
his suite was roped off so that the passen- 
gers could not promenade there ; and a close- 
fitting green baize door shut off the corridor 
leading to his quarters. His meals were 
served by his own butler and by one of the 
yacht stewards; and his daily routine went 
on as usual. 

During the voyage I was broken in to 
the task of reading the magazines to J. P. 
So far as current issues were concerned I 
had to take the ones he liked best — The At- 
lantic Monthly, The American Magazine, 
The Quarterly Review, The Edinburgh Be- 
view. The World's Work, and The North 
American Review — and thoroughly master 
their contents. 

While I was engaged on this sufficiently 
arduous labor I made, on cards, lists of the 
titles of all the articles and abstracts of all 
the more important ones, I have by me as I 
write a number of these lists, and I repro- 
duce one of them. 

The following Hst of articles represents 



198 JOSEPH PULITZER 

what Mr. Pulitzer got from me in a highly 
condensed form during one hour: "The 
Alleged Passing of Wagner," "The Decline 
and Fall of Wagner," "The Mission of 
Richard Wagner," "The Swiftness of Jus- 
tice in England and in the United States," 
"The Public Lands of the United States," 
"New Zealand and the Woman's Vote," 
"The Lawyer and the Coromunity," "The 
Tariff Make-believe," "The Smithsonian 
Institute," "The Spirit and Letter of Ex- 
clusion," "The Panama Canal and Ameri- 
can Shipping," "The Authors and Signers 
of the Declaration of Independence," "The 
German Social Democracy," "The Chang- 
ing Position of American Trade," "The 
Passing of Polygamy." 

I remember very well the occasion on which 
I gave him these articles. We were walking 
on one of the lower promenade decks of the 
Cedric, and J. P. asked me if I had any 
magazine articles ready for him. I told him, 
having the list of articles in my left hand, 
that I had fifteen ready. He pulled out his 
watch, and holding it toward me said: 



JOSEPH PULITZER 199 

"What time is it?" 

"Twelve o'clock," I replied. 

"Very good ; that gives us an hour before 
lunch. Now go on with your articles; I'll 
allow you four minutes for each of them." 

He did not actually take four minutes for 
each, for some of them did not interest him 
after my summary had run for a minute or 
so, but we just got the fifteen in during the 
hour. 

After all that was possible had been done 
in the way of reducing the number of maga- 
zine articles, by rejecting the unsuitable 
ones, and their length by careful condensa- 
tion, we were unable to keep pace with the 
supply. When a hundred or so magazines 
had accumulated Mr. Pulitzer had the lists 
of contents read to him, and from these he 
selected the articles which he wished to have 
read; and these arrears were disposed of 
when an opportunity presented itself. 

At times Mr. Pulitzer did not feel well 
enough to take this concentrated mental 
food, and turned for relief to novels, plays 
and light literature; at times, when he was 



200 JOSEPH PULITZER 

feeling unusually well, he occupied himself 
for several days in succession with matters 
concerning The World — in dictating edi- 
torials, letters of criticism, instruction and 
inquiry, or in considering the endless prob- 
lems relating to policy, business manage- 
ment, personnel, and the soaring price of 
white paper. 

An interesting feature of his activity on 
behalf of The World was his selection of 
new wi'iters. Although his supervision of 
the paper extended to every branch, from 
advertising to news, from circulation to 
color-printing, it was upon the editorial page 
that he concentrated his best energies and 
his keenest observation. 

It is no exaggeration to say that the edi- 
torial page of The World was to J. P. what 
a child is to a parent. He had watched it 
daily for a quarter of a century. During 
that time, I am told, he had read to him 
seventy-five per cent, of all the editorials 
which were printed on it, and had every car- 
toon described. Those who are interested 
in the editorial page of The Wgrld should 



JOSEPH PULITZER 201 

read Mr. John L. Heaton's admirable His- 
tory of a Page, published last year. 

J. P.'s theory of editorial writing, which 
I heard him propound a dozen times, called 
for three cardinal qualities — brevity, direct- 
ness and style — and, as these could not be 
expected to adorn hasty writing, he em- 
ployed a large staff of editorial writers and 
tried to limit each man to an average of half 
a column a day, unless exceptional circum- 
stances called for a lengthy treatment of 
some important question. 

He watched the style of each man with 
the closest attention, examining the length 
of the paragraphs, of the sentences, of the 
words, the variety of the vocabulary, the 
choice of adjectives and adverbs, the em- 
ployment of superlatives, the selection of a 
heading, the nicety of adjustment between 
the thought to be expressed and the lan- 
guage employed for its expression. 

If he chanced in the course of his reading 
to run across any apt phrase in regard to 
literary style he would get one of us to type 
a number of copies and send one to each of 



202 JOSEPH PULITZER 

the editorial writers on The World, The 
following were sent from Wiesbaden: 

"Thiers compares a perfect style to glass 
through which we look without being conscious 
of its presence between the object and the eye." 
(From Abraham Hay ward's "Essay on Thiers.") 

"Lessing, Lichtenberger, and Schopenhauer 
agreed in saying that it is difficult to write well, 
that no man naturally writes well, and that one 
must, in order to acquire a style, work strenuously 
^ . • I have tried to write well." (Nietzsche.) 

J. P. was never tired of discussing liter- 
ary style, of making comparisons between 
one language and another from the point of 
view of an exact expression of an idea, or 
of the different sound of the same idea ex- 
pressed in different languages. For in- 
stance, he asked us once during an argument 
about translations of Shakespeare to com- 
ipare the lines: 

"You are my true and honorable wife, 
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops 
That visit my sad heart." 



JOSEPH PULITZER 203 

with the German: 

"Ihr seid mein echtes, ehrenwertes Weib, 
So teuer mir, als wie die Purpurtropfen 
Die um mein trauernd Herz sich drangen." 

and the opening words of Hamlet's solilo- 
quy with the German : 

"Sein oder Nichtsein, das ist hier die Frage." 

Of the former pair he greatly preferred 
the English, of the latter the German. 

Sometimes we discussed at great length 
the exact English equivalent of some Ger- 
man or French word. I remember one which 
he came back to again and again, the word 
leichtsinnig. We suggested as transla- 
tions, frivolous, irresponsible, hare-brained, 
thoughtless, chicken- witted, foolish, crazy; 
but we never fomid an expression which 
suited him. 

But I have wandered away from the sub- 
ject of editorial writers. During the time I 
was with J. P. he selected two, and his 
method of selection is of interest in view of 



204 JOSEPH PULITZER 

the great importance he attached to the edi- 
torial page of The World, 

As I have said elsewhere, J. P. got prac- 
tically all the important articles from every 
paper of consequence in the United States. 
If he read an editorial which impressed him, 
possibly from a Chicago or a San Francisco 
paper, he put it on one side and told Pollard, 
who read all this kind of material to him, to 
watch the clippings from that paper and to 
pick out any other editorials which he could 
identify as the work of the same man. Five 
years with J. P. had made Pollard an ex- 
pert in penetrating the disguise of the edi- 
torial "We." 

As soon as a representative collection of 
the unknown man's writings had been made 
J. P. instructed some one on The World to 
find out who the author was and to request 
that he would supply what he considered to 
be a fair sample of his work, a dozen or 
more articles, and a brief biography of him- 
self. 

If Mr. Pulitzer was satisfied with these 
an offer would be made to the man to join 



JOSEPH PULITZER 205 

the staff of The World. Sometimes even 
these gentlemen were summoned to New 
York, to Bar Harbor, to Wiesbaden, or to 
Mentone, according to circumstances. I have 
met several of them, and they all agree in 
saying that the hardest work they ever did 
in their lives was to keep pace with Mr. 
Pulitzer while they were running the gaunt- 
let of his judgment. 

There are few men highly placed on The 
World to-day who have not been through 
such an ordeal. I doubt if any man was 
ever served by a staff whose individual abil- 
ity, temper, resources and limitations were 
so minutely known to their employer. He 
knew them to the last ounce of their endur- 
ance, to the last word of their knowledge, 
beyond the last veil which enables even the 
most intelligent man to harbor, mercifully, 
a few delusions about himself. 

To those who did not know Mr. Pulitzer 
it may appear that I exaggerate his powers 
in this direction. As a matter of fact I be- 
lieve that it would be impossible to do so. 

When he had his sight he judged men as 



206 JOSEPH PULITZER 

others judge them, and, making full allow- 
ance for his genius for observation and anal- 
ysis, he was no doubt influenced to some ex- 
tent by appearance, manners and associa- 
tions. But after he became blind and re- 
tired from contact with all men, except a 
circle which cannot have exceeded a score in 
number, his judgment took on a new meas- 
ure of clearness and perspective. 

As a natural weapon of self-defense he 
developed a system of searching examina- 
tion before which no subterfuge could stand. 
It was minute, persistent, comprehensive 
and ingenious in the last degree. It might 
begin to-day, reach an apparent conclusion, 
and be renewed after a month's silence. In 
the meantime, while the whole matter was 
becoming dim in your mind, inquiries had 
been made in a dozen directions in regard to 
the points at issue; and when the subject was 
reopened you were confronted not only with 
J. P.'s perfect memory of what you had said 
but with a detailed knowledge of matters 
which you had passed by as unimportant, or 



JOSEPH PULITZER 207 

deliberately avoided for any one of a dozen 
perfectly honest reasons. 

J. P/s questions covered names, places, 
dates, motives, the chain of causation, what 
you said, what you did, what you felt, what 
you thought, the reasons why you felt, 
thought, acted as you did, the reasons why 
your thought and action had not been such- 
and-such, your opinion of your own conduct, 
in looking back upon the episode, your opin- 
ion of the thoughts, actions and feelings of 
everybody else concerned, your conjectures 
as to their motives, what you would do if 
you were again faced with the same prob- 
lem, why you would do it, why you had not 
done it on the previous occasion. 

Starting at any point in your career Mr. 
Pulitzer worked backward and forward 
until all that you had ever thought or done, 
from your earliest recollection down to the 
present moment, had been disclosed to him 
so far as he was interested to know it, and 
your memory served you. 

This process varied in length according to 
the nature of the experiences of the person 



208 JOSEPH PULITZER 

subjected to it, and to the precise quality of 
Mr. Pulitzer's interest in him. In my own 
case it lasted about three months and was 
copiously interspersed with written state- 
ments by myself of facts about myself, 
opinions by myself about myself, and end- 
less references to people I had known dur- 
ing the past twenty-five years. 

Mr. Pulitzer's attitude toward references 
was the product of vast experience. He 
complained that scores of men had come to 
him with references from some of the most 
distinguished people living, references so 
glowing that one man should have been 
ashamed to write them and the other ashamed 
to receive them, references of such a charac- 
ter that their happy possessors might, with- 
out being guilty of immodesty, have applied 
for the Chief Justiceship of the United 
States, the Viceroyalty of India, the Arch- 
bishopric of Canterbury, the Presidency of 
the Royal College of Surgeons, or the Mas- 
tership of Baliol, but that the great majority 
of these men had turned out to be ignorant, 
lazy and stupid to an unbelievable degree. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 209 

When the question of my own references 
came up I begged in sl humorous way that, 
having heard J. P.'s views about the value 
of testimonials, my friends should be spared 
the useless task of eulogizing me. 

"No, my God!" exclaimed J. P. "None 
of them shall be spared. What I said about 
testimonials is all perfectly true ; but it only 
serves to show what sort of person a man 
must be who can't even get testimonials. 
No, no ; if a man brings references it proves 
nothing; but if he can't, it proves a great 
deal." 

Our voyage to New York was marred by 
but one distressing feature, the behavior of 
two infants, one of whom cried all day and 
the other all night. J. P. stood it very well. 
I think he regarded it as one of the few 
necessary noises. He suffered from it, of 
course, but the only remark he ever made to 
me about it was: 

"I really think that one of the most ex- 
traordinary things in the world is the amount 
of noise a child can make. Here we are with 
a sixty-mile gale blowing and some ten thou- 



210 JOSEPH PULITZER 

sand horse-power engines working inside the 
ship, and yet that child can make itself heard 
from one end of the boat to the other. I 
think there must be two of them; the sound 
is not quite the same at night. Now, Mr. 
Ireland, do, just for the fun of it, find out 
about that. Don't let the mother know — I 
wouldn't like to hurt her feelings; but ask 
one of the stewards about it." 

In due course we reached New York. The 
Liberty, which had crossed directly from 
Marseilles, met us at quarantine, and Mr. 
Pulitzer was transferred to her without land- 
ing. The rest of us joined the yacht the 
same evening. That night we sailed for Bar 
Harbor. 



CHAPTER VII 

Bar Harbor and the Last Cruise 

DURING the forenoon of the follow- 
ing day we dropped anchor opposite 
the water-front of Mr. Pulitzer's Bar Har- 
bor estate. The house was situated right on 
the rocky foreshore, and was backed by ex- 
tensive grounds which completely cut it off 
from the noise of the traffic on the main 
road. 

By means of a flight of granite steps, 
leading down from a lawn laid along the 
whole of the house-front, within containing 
walls, access was had to a pier to the end of 
which was attached a floating pontoon af- 
fording an easy means of boarding the 
yacht's boats or the launches which were kept 
at Chatwold for use when the house was oc- 
cupied. 

211 



212 JOSEPH PULITZER 

Chatwold was a big, rambling place, 
which had been added to from time to time 
until it was capable of accommodating about 
twenty people in addition to J. P., whose 
quarters were in a large granite structure, 
specially designed with a view to securing 
complete quietness. This building was in 
the form of a tower about forty feet square 
and four stories high. On the ground floor 
was a magnificent room, occupying the 
whole length of the tower and two-thirds of 
its breadth, which served as a library and 
dining-room for J. P. On the side facing 
the sea there was a large verandah where 
Mr. Pulitzer took his breakfast and where 
he sat a great deal during the day when he 
was transacting business or being read to. 

The whole of the basement of the tower 
was taken up by a swimming pool and dress- 
ing rooms. The water was pumped in from 
the sea and could be heated by a system of 
steam pipes. The upper floors of the tower 
were given over to bedrooms, for J. P., for 
the major-domo and for several of the sec- 
retaries. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 213 

Most of the servants were housed in a 
large building some distance from the main 
residence, and there were separate quarters 
for the grooms and stablemen, and for the 
heard gardener and his assistants. 

While we were at Chatwold there was a 
gathering of the Pulitzer family — Mrs. Jo- 
seph Pulitzer, a cousin of Jefferson Davis 
and a belle of Washington in her day, who 
married Mr. Pulitzer years before his suc- 
cess in life had been made and when the fight 
for his place in journalism was still in its 
early stages; Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Pulitzer 
and their young son, Ralph ; Mr. and Mrs. 
Joseph PuUtzer, Jr., Miss Edith Pulitzer, 
Miss Constance Pulitzer and Mr. Pulitzer's 
youngest child, Herbert, a boy of fifteen. 

The presence of the family had little ef- 
fect upon the routine of Mr. Pulitzer's daily 
life. He saw as much of his wife and chil- 
dren as he could; but the intensity of his 
family emotions was such that they could 
only be given rein at the price of sleepless 
nights, savage pain, and desperate weari- 
ness. His interest in everything concerning 



214 JOSEPH PULITZER 

the family was overwhelming, his curiosity 
inexhaustible. Everybody had to be de- 
scribed over and over again, but especially 
young Master Ralph, a bright and hand- 
some child, born long after his grandfather 
had become totally blind, and Master Her- 
bert, of whose appearance he retained only 
a memory of the dim impressions he had been 
able to gather years before when a little 
sight yet remained to him. 

It was at lunch and at dinner that Mr. 
Pulitzer saw most of the family. He almost 
always took his meals in the library at a 
table seating four; and the party usually in- 
cluded Mrs. Pulitzer, one of the other ladies 
or Master Herbert, and a secretary. I was 
present at a great many of these gatherings, 
partly because J. P. had gradually acquired 
a taste for such humor as I was able to con- 
tribute to the conversation, and partly be- 
cause he relished a salad-dressing which rep- 
resented my only accomplishment in the gas- 
tronomic field. 

A feature of the Bar Harbor life which 
Mr. Pulitzer enjoyed greatly and which he 



JOSEPH PULITZER 215 

could not indulge in elsewhere were the long 
trips he made in a big electric launch on the 
sheltered waters of Frenchman's Bay. 
When the weather was fine these trips occu- 
pied two or three hours each day. J. P. sat 
in an armchair amidships, with two com- 
panions, very often his two older sons, to 
read to him or to discuss business affairs. 

On the occasions when I formed one of 
the party I had the opportunity of observ- 
ing that so far as the quantity and the qual- 
ity of work were concerned it was an easier 
task to be one of Mr. Pulitzer's secretaries 
than to be one of his sons. I have never seen 
men put to a more severe test of industry, 
concentration, and memory than were Mr. 
Ralph and Mr. Joseph, Jr., while they were 
at Bar Harbor or on the yacht. 

It is a pleasure to bear witness to the af- 
fectionate solicitude, the patience, and the 
good will with which they met the exacting 
demands of their father. They realized, of 
course, as every one who worked for J. P. 
realized it, that the weight of the burden he 
placed upon you and the strictness of the 



216 JOSEPH PULITZER 

account to which you were called were the 
truest measure of his regard. 

Next to politics there was nothing which 
interested J. P. more than molding and de- 
veloping the people around him; and what 
was no more than a strong interest when it 
concerned his employees became a passion 
when it concerned his sons. His activities in 
this direction ministered aUke to his love of 
power and to his horror of wasted talents; 
they gratified his ever-present desire to dis- 
cover the boundaries of human character and 
intellect, to explore the mazes of human tem- 
perament and emotion. 

What you knew and what you were able 
to do, once you had reached a certain stand- 
ard, became secondary in his interest to what 
you could be made to know and what you 
could be taught to do. He was never con- 
tent that a man should stand upon his rec- 
ord ; growth and development were the chief 
aims of his discipline. 

His method was well illustrated in my 
own case. One of his earliest injunctions to 
me was that I should never introduce any 



JOSEPH PULITZER 217 

subject of conversation connected, in how- 
ever remote a degree, with my travels or 
with my studies in relation to the govern- 
ment of tropical dependencies. When, for 
instance, he happened to need some informa- 
tion about India or the West Indies, he al- 
ways directed one of the other men to find it 
for him. This arrangement had, from his 
standpoint, the double advantage of making 
the other man learn something of which he 
was ignorant, and of leaving me free to 
work at something of which I was ignorant. 
Thus J. P. killed two intellectual birds with 
one stone. 

It was not only in regard to mental ac- 
complishments, however, that J. P. pursued 
his plan of educating everybody around 
him. He insisted, among other things, that 
I should learn to ride, not because there was 
any lack of people who could ride with him, 
but because by means of application I could 
add a new item to the list of things I could 
do. After a dozen lessons from a groom I 
progressed so far that, having acquired the 
ability to stay more or less in the saddle while 



218 JOSEPH PULITZER 

the horse trotted, Mr. Puhtzer frequently 
took me riding with him. 

We always rode three abreast — a groom 
on J. P.'s right and myself on his left ; and 
conversation had to be kept up the whole 
time. This presented no peculiar 'difficulties 
when the horses were walking, but when 
they trotted I found it no easy task to keep 
my seat, to preserve the precise distance 
from J. P. which saved me from touching 
his stirrup and yet allowed me to speak with- 
out raising my voice, and to leave enough 
of my mind unoccupied to remember my ma- 
terial and to present it without betraying the 
discomfort of my position. 

During these rides, and especially when 
we were walking our horses along a quiet, 
shady stretch of road, J. P. sometimes be- 
came reminiscent. On one of these occa- 
sions he told me the story of how he lost his 
sight. As I wrote it down as soon as we got 
back to the house, I can tell it almost in his 
own words. 

We had been discussing the possibility of 
his writing an autobiography, and he said. 




JOSEPH PULITZER IN 1902, 
RIDING IN CENTRAL PARK WITH A SECRETARY 



JOSEPH PULITZER 219 

throwing his head back and smiUng reflect- 
ively: 

"Well, I sometimes wish it could be done. 
It would make an interesting book; but I 
do not think I shall ever do it. My God! 
I work from morning to night as it is. 
When would I get the time?" 

Then suddenly changing his mood: "It 
won't do any harm for you to make a few 
notes now and then, and some day, perhaps, 
we might go through them and see if there 
is anything worth preserving. Has any one 
ever told you how I lost my sight? No? 
Well, it was in November, 1887. The 
World had been conducting a vigorous cam- 
paign against municipal corruption in New 
York — a campaign which ended in the ar- 
rest of a financier who had bought the votes 
of aldermen in order to get a street railroad 
franchise." 

At this point he paused. His jaws set, 
and his expression became stern, almost 
fierce, as he added: "The man died in jail 
of a broken heart, and I . . and I . , . " 
He took a deep breath and continued as 



220 JOSEPH PULITZER 

though he were reciting an experience which 
he had heard related of some stranger. 

"I was, of course, violently attacked; and 
it was a period of terrible strain for me. 
What with anxiety and overwork I began 
to suffer from insomnia, and that soon pro- 
duced a bad condition of my nerves. One 
morning I went down to The World and 
called for the editorials which were ready 
for me to go over. I always read every line 
of editorial copy. When I picked up the 
sheets I was astonished to find that I could 
hardly see the writing, let alone read it. I 
thought it was probably due to indigestion 
or to some other temporary cause, and said 
nothing about it. The next morning on my 
way downtown I called in at an oculist's. 
He examined my eyes and then told me to 
go home and remain in bed in a darkened 
room for six weeks. At the end of that 
time he examined me again, said that I had 
ruptured a blood vessel in one of my eyes, 
and ordered me to stop work entirely and to 
take six months' rest in California. 

"That was the beginning of the end. 



JOSEPH PULITZER 221 

Whatever my trouble had been at first, it 
developed into separation of the retina in 
both eyes. From the day on which I first 
consulted the oculist up to the present time, 
about twenty-four years, I have only been 
three times in The World building. Most 
people think I'm dead, or living in Europe 
in complete retirement. Now go on and 
give me the morning's news. I've had prac- 
tically nothing, so you can just run over it 
briefly, item by item." 

On another occasion he told me an amus- 
ing story of an experience he had had out in 
Missouri just after the end of the Civil War. 
He had spent some weeks riding from coun- 
ty-seat to county-seat securing registration 
for a deed making title for a railroad. One 
evening he was nearly drowned through his 
horse stumbling in the middle of a ford. 
When he dragged himself up the bank on 
the other side, drenched to the skin and wor- 
ried by the prospect of having to catch his 
mount, which had started oif on a cross- 
country gallop, he saw an elderly farmer sit- 



222 JOSEPH PULITZER 

ting on a tree stump, and watching him with 
intense interest and perfect seriousness. 

This man put J. P. up for the night. 
They got along famously for a while, but 
presently all was changed. 

"The first thing he did," said J. P., "was 
to take me to the farmhouse and hand me a 
tumbler three parts full of whisky. When I 
refused this he looked at me as though he 
thought I was mad. 'Yer mean ter tell me 
yer don't drink?' he said. (It was one of 
the rare occasions when I heard Mr. Pulitzer 
try to imitate any one's peculiarities of 
speech.) When I told him no, I didn't, he 
said nothing, but brought me food. 

"After I had eaten he pulled out a plug 
of tobacco, bit off a large piece, and offered 
the plug to me. I thanked him, but declined. 
It took him some time to get over that, but 
at last he said: 'Yer mean ter tell me yer 
don't chew? I said no, I didn't. He 
dropped the subject, and for an hour or so 
we talked about the war and the crops and 
the proposed railroad. 

"That man was a gentleman. He didn't 



JOSEPH PULITZER 223 

take another drink or another chew of to- 
bacco all that time. The only sign he gave 
of his embarrassment was that every now 
and then during a pause in the conversation 
he fell to shaking his head in a puzzled sort 
of way. Finally, before he went to bed, he 
produced a pipe, filled it, and handed the 
tobacco to me; but I failed him again, and 
he put his own pipe back in his pocket, firm- 
ly but sorrowfully. 

"Well, my God! it was nearly half an 
hour before he spoke again, and I was be- 
ginning to think that I had really wounded 
his feelings by dechning his hospitable of- 
fers, when he came over and stood in front 
of me and looked down on me with an ex- 
pression of profound pity. I shall never 
forget his words. 'Young feller,' he said, 
'you seem to be right smart and able for a 
furriner, but let me tell yow, you'll never 
make a successful American until yer learn 
to drink, and chew, and smoke.' " 

Chatwold being within telephone distance 
of New York, Jo P. was constantly sub- 
Ijected to the temptation of ringing up The. 



224 JOSEPH PULITZER 

World in order to discuss editorial or busi- 
ness matters. He yielded too often, and the 
additional excitement and work incident to 
these conversations (which were always car- 
ried on through a third person) were a se- 
vere strain on his vitality. When he was ab- 
solutely worn out he would take refuge on 
the yacht and steam out to sea for the pur- 
pose of enjoying a few days of comparative 
rest. 

There is a matter which I may mention in 
connection with J. P.'s life on the yacht 
which, trivial as it seems when told at this 
distance of time, never failed to make a pro- 
found impression upon me. Of all the try- 
ing moments which were inseparable from 
attendance upon a blind man with a will of 
iron and a nervous system of gossamer, no 
moment was quite so full of uneasiness as 
that in which J. P. used the gangway in 
boarding or in leaving the yacht. 

Take the case of his going ashore. The 
yacht lies at anchor in a gentle swell; the 
launch comes up to the gangway; two or 
three men with boat-hooks occupy them- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 225 

selves in trying to keep it steady. First over 
the side goes Dunningham, backward, then 
Mr. Pulitzer facing forward, one hand on 
the gang-rail, the other on Dunningham's 
shoulder; then an officer and one of the sec- 
retaries, close behind J. P. and ready to 
clutch him if he slipped. 

Dunningham reaches the grating at the 
foot of the gangway, then J. P., then there 
is a pause while the latter is placed in the 
exact position where one step forward will 
carry him into the launch, where the officer 
in charge is ready to receive him. 

In the meantime the launch is bobbing up 
and down, its gunwale at one instant level 
with the gangway-grating, at another, two 
or three feet below it. At the precise mo- 
ment when the launch is almost at the top of 
its rise Dunningham says: "Now, step, 
please, Mr. PuHtzer." But J. P. waits just 
long enough to allow the launch to drop a 
couple of feet, and then suddenly makes up 
his mind and tries to step off onto nothing. 
Dunningham, the officer and the secretary 



226 JOSEPH PULITZER 

seize him as he cries: "My God! What's 
the matter? You told me to step." 

Then follows a long argument as to what 
Dunningham had meant precisely when he 
said "Step!" This whole process might be 
repeated several times before he actually 
found himself in the launch. 

The whole thing inspired me with a mor- 
bid curiosity ; and whenever J. P. was going 
up or down the gangway I always found 
myself, in common, I may add, with a con- 
siderable proportion of the ship's company, 
leaning over the side watching this nerve- 
racking exhibition. 

I have said that it was J. P.'s custom to 
seek repose on the yacht when he was worn 
out with overwork ; but it would be more ac- 
curate to say that rest was the seldom real- 
ized object of these short cruises, for noth- 
ing was more difficult for J. P. than to drop 
his work so long as he had a vestige of 
strength left with which he could jfliog his 
mind into action. 

Starting out with the best intentions, J. 
P.'s cruises of recuperation were usually cut 



JOSEPH PULITZER 227 

short by putting in to Portland, or New 
London, or Marblehead to get newspapers 
and to send telegrams summoning to the 
yacht one or another of the higher staff of 
The World. 

It was, however, when we anchored, as 
we often did, off Greenwich, Conn., that J. 
P. indulged himself to his utmost capacity 
in conferences with editors and business 
managers of The World and with one or 
two outsiders. We would drop anchor in 
the afternoon, pick up a visitor, cruise in 
the Sound for a night and a morning, drop 
anchor again, send the visitor ashore, and 
pick up another. 

Toward the latter part of September, 
1911, J. P. left the yacht and moved into 
his town house in East 73d Street. It was a 
large and beautifully designed mansion, dif- 
fering in three particulars from the ordinary 
run of residences which have been built, fur- 
nished, and decorated with the utmost good 
taste and without regard to expense. 

The room in which J. P. usually took his 
meals was a small but beautifully propor- 



228 JOSEPH PULITZER 

tioned retreat so placed that it was com- 
pletely surrounded by other rooms and had 
no direct contact with the outside world. It 
was in its ground plan an irregular octagon, 
and it drew its light and air from a glass 
dome. The most striking element in the 
decorations was a number of slender col- 
umns of pale-green Irish marble, which rose 
from the floor to the dome. 

Another unusual feature of the house was 
a superb church organ, which was built into 
a large recess halfway up the main stair- 
case. J. P. was an enthusiastic lover of or- 
gan music, and heard as much of it as he 
could during his brief visits to New York. 

There are no doubt other houses which 
have an octagonal dining-room and a church 
organ ; but no other house, I am sure, has a 
bedroom like that which Mr. Pulitzer occu- 
pied. Although it appeared to form part of 
the house, it did not, in fact, do so. It stood 
upon its own foundations and was connected 
with the main structure by some ingenious 
device which isolated it from all vibrations 
originating there. It was of the most solid 



JOSEPH PULITZER 229 

construction, and had but one window, a 
very large affair, consisting of three case- 
ments set one inside the other and provided 
with heavy plate glass panels. This triple 
window was never opened when Mr. Pulit- 
zer was in the room, the ventilation being 
secured by means of fans situated in a long 
masonry shaft whose interior opening was 
in the chimney and whose exterior opening 
was far enough away to forbid the passage 
of any sound from the street. At intervals 
inside this shaft were placed frames with 
silk threads drawn across them, for the pur- 
pose of absorbing any faint vibrations 
which might find their way in. In this bed- 
room, with its triple window and its heavy 
Jouble-door closed, J. P. enjoyed as near an 
approach to perfect quietness as it was pos- 
sible to attain in New York. 

I saw very little of J. P. when he was in 
New York. He was much occupied with 
family affairs ; he was in constant touch with 
the staff of The World; and the deep inter- 
est he took in the prospects of the presiden- 
tial election of 1912, which was already be- 



230 JOSEPH PULITZER 

ing eagerly discussed, brought an unusual 
number of visitors to the house. 

The extent of my intercourse with J. P. 
at this time was an occasional drive in Cen- 
tral Park, during which we talked of little 
else but politics, and on that topic of little 
else but Mr. Woodrow Wilson's speeches 
and plans. 

It did not take very long before the hard 
work and the excitement of the New York 
life reduced Mr. Pulitzer to a condition in 
which it was imperative that he should go to 
sea again and abandon completely his con- 
tact with the daily events which stimulated 
rather than nourished his mental powers. 

On October 20, 1911, the Liberty left 
New York with J. P., his youngest son, 
Herbert, and the usual staff. We headed 
south, with nothing settled as to our plans 
except that we might spend some time at 
Mr. Pulitzer's house on Jekyll Island, Ga., 
and might pass part of the winter cruising 
in the West Indies. 

As soon as we got settled down on board 
I was delighted to find that J. P. had ap- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 231 

parently satisfied himself in regard to my 
qualifications and limitations. He aban- 
doned the searching examinations which had 
kept me on the rack for nearly eight months, 
and our relations became much more agree- 
able. 

Apart from bearing my share in the rou- 
tine work of dealing with the news of the 
day and with the current magazine literature 
my principal duty gradually assumed the 
form of furnishing humor on demand. 

The easiest part of this task was that of 
reading humorous books to J. P. When he 
was in the right mood and would submit to 
the process, I read to him the greater part 
of "Dooley," of Artemus Ward, of Max 
Adler, and portions of W. W. Jacobs, of 
Lorimer's Letters of a Self-made Merchant 
to His SoUj, of Mrs. Anne Warner's Susan 
Clegg and Her Friend Mrs, Lathrop^ and 
of some of Stockton's delightful stories. 
My greatest triumph was in inducing him to 
forget for a while his intense aversion to 
slang and to listen to the shrewd and genial 
philosophy of George Ade. 



232 JOSEPH PULITZER 

The work of the official humorist to J. P. 
was rendered particularly arduous because 
he carried into the field of humor, absolutely- 
unabated, his passion for facts. To most 
people a large part of humor consists in the 
manner of presentation, in the trick of 
phrase, in the texture of the narrative. To 
J. P. those things meant little or nothing; 
what amused him was the situation disclosed, 
the inherent humor of the action or thought. 

As I have said, it was not difficult to read 
humorous material to J. P. when he delib- 
erately resigned himself to it. What was 
exceedingly difficult was to rise to those fre- 
quent occasions when, tired, vexed and out 
of sorts, he suddenly interrupted your sum- 
mary of a magazine article by saying: 
"Stop! Stop! For God's sake! I've got a 
frightful headache. Now tell me some hu- 
morous stories — make me laugh." 

In order to meet these urgent and embar- 
rassing demands I ransacked the periodical 
press of England and America. I procured 
a year's file of Pearson's Weekly, of Tit 



JOSEPH PULITZER 233 

Bits and of Life^ and scores of stray copies 
of Puck, Judge and Answers, 

From these I cut hundreds of short hu- 
morous paragraphs, which I kept in a box 
in my cabin. Whenever I was summoned 
to attend upon J. P. I put a handful of these 
clippings in my pocket. I am afraid I 
should make enemies if I were to tell of the 
thousands of stories I had to read in order 
to get the hundreds which came within range 
even of my modest hopes; but I may say 
that line for line I got more available stories 
from the "Newspaper Waifs" on the edi- 
torial page of the New York Evening Post 
than from any other source. 

Even after I had labored long and hero- 
ically in the vineyard of professional humor, 
grape juice, and not wine, was the com- 
moner product of my efforts. 

It was no unusual experience that after I 
had told J. P. one of the best tales in my 
collection he would say: "Well, go on, go 
on, come to the point. For God's sake, isn't 
there any end to this story?" 

On October 25, 1911, we put into the har- 



234 JOSEPH PULITZER 

bor of Charlestown, S. C. There was the 
usual business of collecting mail, news- 
papers, and so on, for J. P., after five days 
at sea, was eager to pick up the thread of 
current happenings. 

On "the following day Mr. Lathan, editor 
of the Charleston Courier, lunched on the 
yacht. He and Mr. Pulitzer had an ani- 
mated discussion about the possibilities of a 
Democratic victory in 1912. I had never 
seen J. P. in a more genial mood or in higher 
spirits. 

Whether it was due to the excitement of 
receiving a visitor whose conversation was so 
stimulating I do not know; but on Friday, 
October 27, J. P. was feeling so much out 
of sorts that he did not appear on deck. On 
Saturday he remained below only because 
Dunningham, who always kept the closest 
watch over his health, persuaded him to have 
a good rest before resuming the ordinary 
routine. J. P. was anxious to take up some 
business matters with Thwaites, but Dun- 
ningham induced him to give up the idea. 

At three o'clock in the morning of Sun- 



JOSEPH PULITZER 235 

day, October 29, Dunningham came to my 
cabin and, without making any explanation, 
said: 

"Mr. Pulitzer wishes you to come and 
read to him." 

I put on a dressing gown, gathered up 
half a dozen books, and in five minutes I 
was sitting by Mr. Pulitzer's bedside. He 
was evidently suffering a good deal of pain, 
for he turned from side to side, and once or 
twice got out of bed and sat in an easy 
chair. 

I tried several books, but finally settled 
down to read Macaulay's Essay on Hallam. 
I read steadily until about five o'clock, and 
J. P. listened attentively, interrupting me 
from time to time with a direction to go back 
and read over a passage. 

About half -past five he began to suffer 
severely, and he sent for the yacht's doctor, 
who did what was possible for him. At a 
few minutes after six J. P. said: "Now, Mr. 
Ireland, you'd better go and get some sleep ; 
we will finish that this afternoon. Good- 
bye, I'm much obliged to you. Ask Mr. 



236 JOSEPH PULITZER 

Mann to come to me. Go, now, and have 
a good rest, and forget all about me." 

I slept till noon. When I came on deck 
I found that everything was going on much 
as usual. One of the secretaries was with 
J. P. ; the others were at work over the day's 
papers. 

At lunch we spoke of J. P. One man said 
that he seemed a little worse than usual, an- 
other that he had seen him much worse a 
score of times. 

Suddenly the massive door at the forward 
end of the saloon opened. I turned in my 
seat and saw framed in the doorway the tow- 
ering figure of the head butler. I faced his 
impassive glance, and received the full shock 
of his calm but incredible announcement: 
"Mr. Puhtzer is dead." 



The End 



I M'\R 195S 



